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DISCOURSE 






facultt^%tudentsp4nd alumni 



OF 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, 



ON 



THE DAY PRECEDING COMMENCEMENT, JULY 27, 1853, 



COMMEMORATIVE OF 



DANIEL WEBSTEK. 



BY 

RUFUS Clio ATE. 



EIGHTH THOUSAND. 



BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE: 
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 

1853. 



Ki^i-' 



.WfCs^^ 



Entered occording to Act of Conjrros?, in the year 1853, by 

JAMKS MUNHOE AND COMl'ANV, 

111 tiio Clerk's OfTicc of tlio District Court of the DUtrict of Jlossachiisetta. 



r A M II i; I i> (i K : 

ALU^' AM) JAKMIAM, 1'U1NTEK8. 



DISCOURSE. 



It would be a strange neglect of a beautiful and 
approved custom of the schools of learning, and of one 
of the most pious and appropriate of the offices of liter- 
ature, if the college in which the intellectual life of 
Daniel Webster began, and to which his name imparts 
charm and illustration, should give no formal expression 
to her grief in the common sorrow ; if she should not 
draw near, of the most sad, in the procession of the 
bereaved, to the tomb at the sea, nor find, in all her 
classic shades, one affectionate and grateful leaf to set 
in the garland with which they have bound the brow of 
her child, the mightiest departed. Others mourn and 
praise him by his more distant and more general titles 
to fame and remembrance ; his supremacy of intellect, 
his statesmanship of so many years, his eloquence of 
reason and of the heart, his love of country incorrupti- 
ble, conscientious, and ruling every hour and act ; that 
greatness combined of genius, of character, of manner, 
of place, of achievement, which was just now among us, 
and is not, and yet lives still and evermore. You come, 
his cherishing mother, to own a closer tie, to indulge an 
emotion more personal and more fond, — grief and exul- 
tation contending for mastery, as in the bosom of the 
desolated parent, whose tears could not hinder him from 
exclaiming, " I would not exchange my dead son for any 
living one of Christendom." 



Many places in uur Anie-iican world have spoken his 
eulo^'V. To all places the service was befitting, lor '• his 
renown, is it not of the treasures of the whole country ?" 
To .some it belonged, with a strong local propriety, to 
discharge it. In the halls of Congress, where the maje;*- 
tic form seems ever to stand and the deep tones to linger, 
the decorated scene of his larger labors and most dillU- 
sivc glory; in the courts of law, to whose gladsome light 
he loved to return, — putting on again the robes of that 
profession ancient as magistracy, noble as virtue, neces- 
sary as justice, — in which lie found the beginning of 
his honors; in Faneuil Hall, whose air breathes and 
burns of him ; in the commercial cities, to whose pursuits 
his diplomacy secured a peaceful sea; in the cities of 
the inland, around whom his capacious public aflections, 
anjl wise discernment, aimed ever to develop the un- 
counted resources of that other, and that larger, and that 
newer America ; in the pulpit, whose place among the 
higher inlluences which exalt a state, our guide in lite, 
our consolation in death, he appreciated profoundly, and 
vindicated by weightiest argument and testimony, of 
whose ofhccs, it is among the fittest, to mark and point 
the moral of the great things of the world, the excellency 
of dignity, and tlie exoelk'ncy of power passing away 
as the pride of the wave, — passing from our eye to 
take on innnortality ; in these places, and such as these, 
there seemed a reason beyond, and other, than the uni- 
versal calamity, for such honors of the grave. But if 
Ko, how fit a place is this lor such a service! AVe arc 
among the scenes where the 3outh of Webster awoke 
first, and fidly, to the life of the mind. We stand, as it 
were, at the sources, physical, social, moral, intelKi'tual, 
of that exceeding greatness, t^ome now here saw that 
youth. Almost it was yours, Kilum jHirnim videre. 



Some, one of his instructors certainly, some possibly of 
his class mates, or nearest college friends, some of the 
books he read, some of the apartments in which he 
studied, are here. We can almost call up from their 
habitation in the past, or in the flmcy, the whole spiritual 
circle which environed that time of his life ; the opinions 
he had embraced ; the theories of mind, of religion, of 
morals, of philosophy, to which he had surrendered him- 
self; the canons of taste and criticism which he had 
accei^ted ; the great authors whom he loved best ; the 
trophies which began to disturb his sleep ; the facts of 
history which he had learned, believed, and begun to 
interpret ; the shapes of hope and fear in which imagi- 
nation began to bring before him the good and evil of 
the future. Still the same outward world is around you, 
and above you. The sweet and solemn flow of the river 
gleaming through intervale here and there ; margins 
and samples of the same old woods, but thinned and re- 
tiring ; the same range of green hills yonder, tolerant 
of culture to the top, but shaded then by primeval 
forests, on whose crest the last rays of sunset lingered ; 
the summit of Ascutney ; the great northern light that 
never sets ; the constellations that walk around, and 
watch the pole ; the same nature, undecayed, unchang- 
ing, is here. Almost, the idolatries of the old paganism 
grow intelligible. " 3Iagnorum flumimim capita veneranmr,'' 
exclaims Seneca. " Siibita et ex ahrupto vasti aninis erupiio 
aras Jiahet ! " "We stand at the fountain of a stream ; we 
stand rather at the place where a stream, sudden, and 
from hidden springs, bursts to light ; and whence we can 
follow it along and down, as we might our own Con- 
necticut, and trace its resplendent pathway to the sea ; 
and we venerate, and would almost build altars here. 
If I may adapt the lofty language of one of the admirers 

1* 



c 

of William Pitt, wc come nfitiirally to this place, as if we 
could thus recall every circumstance of .splL'n(h(l prepara- 
tion which contrihuted to fit the great man fur the scene 
of his lAoTv. We come, as if better here than elsewhere, 
"we could watch, fold by fidd, the bracing on of his 
Vulcan ian panoply, and observe with pleased anxiety, 
the Icadin*' forth of that chariot wliich, borne on irre- 
sistil)le wheels, and drawn by steeds of immortal race, is 
to crush the necks of the mighty, and sweep away the 
serried strenn-th of armies." 

And therefore it were fitter that I should ask of you, 
than speak to you, concerning him. Little indeed any- 
where can be added now to that wealth of eulogy that 
has been heaped upon his tomb. Before he died even, 
renowned in two hemispheres, in ours he seemed to be 
known with a universal nearness of knowledge. He 
walked so long and so conspicuously before the general 
eye ; his actions, his opinions, on all things, which had 
been largo enough to agitate the public mind for the 
last thirty years and more, had had importance and con- 
se(iwences so remarkable — anxiously waited for, pas- 
sionately canvassed, not adopted always into the parti- 
cular measure, or deciding the particular vote of gov- 
ernment or the country, yet sinking deep into the rea- 
son of the peo[)le — a stream of inlluence whose fruits it 
is yet too soon for jiolitie-al ])liilosophy to appreciate 
completely ; an impression of his extraordinary intel- 
lectual endowments, and of their peculiar superiority 
ill that most imposing and inteHigiI)le of all forms of 
manifestation, the moving of others' minds by speech — 
this impression had grown so universal and lixed, and it 
had kindled curiosity to hear him and read him, so wide 
and .Mj largely indulged; his individuality altogether 
was so ab.solute and so pronounced, the force of will no 



less than the power of genius ; the exact type and fash- 
ion of his mincl, not less than its general magnitude, 
were so distinctly shown through his musical and trans- 
parent style ; the exterior of the man, the grand mystery 
of brow and eye, the deep tones, the solemnity, the 
sovereignty, as of those who would build States, " where 
every power and every grace did seem to set its seal," 
had been made, by personal observation, by description, 
by the exaggeration even of those who had felt the 
spell, by art, the daguerreotype, and picture, and statue, 
so familiar to the American eye, graven on the memory 
like the Washington of Stuart; the narrative of the 
mere incidents of his life had been so often told — by 
some so authentically, and with such skill — and had 
been so literally committed to heart, that when he died 
there seemed to be little left but to say when and how 
his change came ; w4th v/hat dignity, withT v^hat posses- 
sion of himself, with vvhat loving thought for others, 
with what gratitude to God,, uttered with unfaltering 
voice, that it was appointed to him there to die ; to say 
how thus, leaning on the rod and staff of the promise, 
he took his way into the great darkness undismayed, till 
death should be swallowed uj) of life ; and then to relate 
how they laid him in that simple grave, and turning and 
pausing and joining their voices to the voices of the sea, 
bade him hail and farewell. 

And yet I hardly know what there is in public biog- 
raphy, what there is in literature, to be compared, in its 
kind, with the variety and beauty and adequacy of the 
series of discourses through which the love and grief, 
and deliberate and reasoning admiration of America for 
this great man, have been uttered. Little, indeed, there 
would be for me to say, if I were capable of the light 
ambition of proposing to omit all which others have said 



8 

OH tliis tlionie before, — little to add if I sought to say 
anv tliin;^ wliollv new. 

I have thought, perhaps the place "where I was to 
speak suggested the topic, that before we approach 
the ultimate and historical greatness of Mr. Webster, in 
its two chiff departments, and attempt to appreciate by 
what (pialities of genius and character, and what succes- 
sion of action he attained it, there might be an interest 
in goiug back of all this, so to sa}', and pausing a few 
moments upon his youth. 1 include in that designation 
the period from his birth, ou the eighteenth day of Jan- 
uary, 17S2, until 1805, when, twenty-three years of age, 
he declined the clerkship of his f\ither's court, and dedi- 
cated himself irrevocably to the profession of the law, 
and the chances of a summons to less or more of public 
lifi'. Thc-o twenty-three years we shall call the youth 
of Wcl)ster. Its incidents are few and well known, and 
need not lonu^ detain us. 

Until May, 170G, beyond the close of his fourteenth 
year, he lived at home, attending the schools of masters 
Chase and Tappan, successively; at work sometimes 
and sometimes at ulav like anv bov ; but finding 
already, as few beside him did, the stiuudations and the 
food of intellectuid life in the social library; drinking 
in, luiawares, from the moral and physical aspects about 
him, the lesson and the power of contention and self- 
trust ; and learninii: how nuich fj-rander than the forest 
])ending to the long storm ; or the silver and cherishing 
Merrimack swollen to inundation, and turning, as love 
become madness, to ravage the subject intervale; or old 
woods sullenly retiring Ijefore axe and fire — learning 
to feel how nuich ij-rauder than these was the comintr in 
of civili/ation as there he saw it, courage, labor, patience, 
plain living, heroical acting, high thinking, beautiful 



9 

feeling, the fear of Gocl, love of country, and neighbor- 
hood, and family, and all that form of human life of 
which his father, and mother, and sisters, and brother, 
were the endeared exemplification. In the arms of that 
circle, on parent knees, or later, in intervals of work or 
play, the future American Statesman acquired the idea 
of country, and became conscious of a national tie and a 
national life. There and then, something, glimpses, a 
little of the romance, the sweet and bitter memories of 
a soldier and borderer of the old colonial time and war, 
opened to the large dark eyes of the child ; memories 
of French and Indians stealing up to the very place 
where the story was telling ; of men shot down at the 
plough, within sight of the old log house ; of the mas- 
sacre at Fort William Henry ; of Stark, of Howe, of 
Wolfe filling in the arms of victory ; and then of the 
next age, its grander scenes and higher names ; of the 
father's part at Bennington and White Plains ; of La- 
fayette and Washington ; and then of the Constitution, 
just adopted, and the first President, just inaugurated, 
with services of public thanksgiving to Almighty God, 
and the Union just sprung into life, all radiant as morn- 
ing, harbinger and promise of a brighter day. You have 
heard how in that season he bought and first read the 
Constitution on the cotton handkerchief A small can- 
non, I think his biographers say, was the ominous play- 
thing of Napoleon's childhood. But this incident reminds 
us rather of the 3'outhfal Luther, astonished and kindling 
over the first Latin Bible he ever saw — or the still 
younger Pascal, permitted to look into the Euclid, to 
whose sublimities an irresistible nature had secretly at- 
tracted him. Long before his fourteenth year, the mother 
first, and then the father, and the teachers and the schools 
and the little neighborhood, had discovered an extra- 



10 

ordinary liopc iu the boy ; ;i purpose, a dreain, not yet 
confessed, of ;_fivin^' liim an education be^^an to be cher- 
ished, and in May, 17'J(j, jit the age of a little more than 
fourteen, he was sent to Exeter. I have mvself heard 
II gentleman, long a leader of the Essex bar, and emi- 
nent ill public life, now no more, who was then a pupil 
at the school, describe his large frame, superb face, 
immature manners, and rustic dress, surmounted with a 
student's gown, when first he came; and say, too, how 
goon and universally his capacity was owned. AVho 
does not wish that the glorious Buckminster could have 
foreseen and witnessed the whole greatness, but certainly 
the renown of eloquence, which were to come to the 
young stranger, whom, choking,speechless, the great foun- 
tain of feelings sealed as yet, he tried in vain to encour- 
age to declaim belbre the unconscious, bright tribes of 
the school? The inlluences of Exeter on him were 
excellent, but his stay was brief. In tlic winter of 1T9G 
he was at home again, and in February, 1707, he was 
placed under the private tuition, and in the family of, 
Kev. i\Ir. AV'ood, of Boscawen. It was on the way with 
his fiither, to the house of Mr. "Wood, that he first heard 
with astonishment, that the parental love and good 
sense had resolved on the sacrifice of liivinLT him au 
education at college. '"I remember," he writes, "the 
very hill we were ascending, through deep snows, in a 
New England sleigh, when my father made his purpose 
known to me. I could not speak. How could he, I 
thought, with so large a family, and in such narrow cir- 
cumstances, think of incurring so great an expense for 
ine ? A warm glow ran all over me, and 1 laid my head 
oil my father's shoulder and wept." That .speechlessness, 
that glow, those tears reveal to us what his memory and 
consciousness could hardly do to him, that already, some- 



11 

where, at some hour of day or evening or night, as he 
read some page, or heard some narrative, or saw some 
happier schoolfellow set off from Exeter to begin his 
college life, the love of intellectual enjoyment, the 
ambition of intellectual supremacy had taken hold of 
him ; that, when or how he knew not, but before he was 
aware of it, the hope of obtaining a liberal education 
and leading a professional life had come to be his last 
thought before he slept ; his first when he awoke ; and 
to shape his dreams. Behold in them, too, his wdiole 
future. That day, that hour, that very moment, from 
the deep snows of that slow hill he set out on the long 
ascent that bore him — " no step backward " — to the 
high places of the world ! He remained under the tui- 
tion of Mr. Wood until August, 1797, and then entered 
this college, where he was, at the end of the full term 
of four years, graduated in 1801. Of that college life 
you can tell me more than I can tell you. It is the uni- 
versal evidence that it was distinguished by exemplary 
demeanor, by reverence for religion, respect for instruc- 
tors, and observance of law. We hear from all sources, 
too, that it was distinguished by assiduous and various 
studies. AVith the exception of one or two branches, 
for which his imperfect preparation had failed to excite 
a taste, he is reported to have addressed himself to the 
prescribed tasks, and to have availed himself of the 
whole body of means of liberal culture appointed by the 
government, with decorum and conscientiousness and 
zeal. We hear more than this. The whole course of 
traditions concerning his college life is full to prove two 
facts. The first is, that his reading, general and various 
far beyond the requirements of the faculty, or the 
average capacity of that stage of the literary life, was 
not solid and useful merely, which is vague commenda- 



12 

tion, Init it was Fuch as predicted and educated the future 
statcsumu. In I'lujrlisli liteniturc, its finer parts, its poe- 
try and tasteful readin<,% 1 mean, he had read much rather 
than many things, l)ut he had read somewhat. That a 
young man of his emotional nature, full of eloquent 
feeling, the germs of a fine taste, the ear for the music 
of words, the eye for all heauty and all sublimity already 
in extraordinary measure his, already practising the art 
of composition, speech, and criticism, should have re- 
created himself, as we know he did, with Shakespeare, 
and Pope, and Addison ; with the great romance of 
Defoe ; with the more recent biographies of Johnson, 
and his grand imitations of Juvenal ; with the sweet and 
refined simplicity and abstracted observation of Gold- 
smith, mingled with sketches of homefelt delight ; with 
the elegy of Gray, whose solemn touches soothed the 
thoughts or tested tho consciousness of the last hour; 
Avith tlic vigorous orij^inality of the then recent Cowper, 
whom he quoted when ho came home, as it proved, to 
die — this we should have expected. But I have heard, 
and believe, that it was to another institution, more aus- 
tere and characteristic, that his own mind was irresisti- 
blv and instinctively even then attracted. The conduct 
()[' what Locke calls the human understanding ; the limits 
of human knowledge; the means of coming to the 
knowledti;c of the different classes of truth ; the laws of 
thou'dit : the science of proofs which is loij;ic ; the science 
of morals; the facts of history; the spirit ol' laws; the 
conduct ;iii(l aims of reasonings in politics — these were 
the strong meat that announced and began to train the 
great political thinker and reasoner of a later day. 

1 have heard that he might oftener be found in some 
solitary seat or wall;, with a volume of Gordon's or IJam- 
say's Kevolution, or of the Federalist, or of Hume's 



13 

History of England, or of his Essays, or of Grotiup, or 
Puffenclorf, or Cicero, or Montesquieu, or Locke, or 
Burke, than with Virgil, or Shakespeare, or the Spectator. 
Of the history of opinions, in the department of philo- 
sophy, he was already a curious student. The oration 
he delivered before the United Fraternity, when ho was 
graduated, treated that topic of opinion, under some 
aspects, as I recollect from once reading the manuscript, 
with copiousness, judgment, and enthusiasm; and soidc 
of his ridicule of the Berkleian theory of the non-ex isl- 
ence of matter, I well remember, anticipated the sar- 
casm of a later day on a currency all metallic, and on 
nullification as a strictly constitutional remedy. 

The other fact, as well established, by all we can g;i- 
ther of his life in college, is, that the faculty, so trixn-^- 
cendent afterwards, of moving the minds of men b)- 
speech, was already developed and effective in a rema liv- 
able degree. Always there is a best writer and speaker 
or two in college ; but this stereotyped designation 
seems wholly inadequate to convey the impression he 
made in his time. Many, now alive, have said that 
some of his performances, having regard to his youlii, 
his objects, his topics, his audience — one on the celebr;i- 
tion of Independence, one a eulogy on a student much 
beloved — produced an instant effect, and left a recollec- 
tion, to which nothing else could be compared ; which 
could be felt and admitted only, not explained ; but 
which now they know were the first sweet tones of in- 
explicable but delightful influence, of that voice, uncon- 
firmed as yet, and unassured, whose more consummate 
expression charmed and suspended the soul of a nation. 
To read these essays now disappoints you somewhat. As- 
Quintilian says of Ilortensius, Apparet placidssc aliqidd ea 
diccntc quod legentes non invcnimus. Some spell there was 

2 



li 

in the spoken word which thu reader misses. To lliid 
tlie secret of that spell, you must recall the youth ol" 
"Webster. IJeloved fondly, and appreciated by that circle, 
as much as by any audience, larger, more exacting, more 
various, and more fit, which afterwards he found any- 
where ; known to be maidy, just, pure, generous, alVec- 
tionatc; known and felt by his strong will, his high 
aims, his commanding character, his unconnuon and 
dillicult studies; In- liad every heart's warmest good 
wi>]i witjj him wlien he ruse; and then, when — un- 
checked by any very severe theory of taste, unoppressed 
by any dread of saying something incompatible with his 
place and fame, or imecjual to himself — he just un- 
locked the deep spring of that eloquent feeling, which, 
in connection with his power of mere intellect, was such 
a stupendous psychological mystery, and gave heart 
and soul, not to the conduct of an argument, or the in- 
vestigation and dis])lay of a trutli of the reason, but to a 
fervid, beautiful, and prolonged emotion, to grief, to 
eulogy, to the patri(jtism of scholars — why need we 
doubt or wonder, as they looked on that presiding brow, 
the eye large, sail, iinworldl}'. incapable to be fathomed, 
the lip and chin, whose firmness as of chiselled, perfect 
marble, profoundest sensibility alone caused ever to 
triMuble. why wonder at the traditions of the charm 
which iliv.y owned ; and the fame which they even then 
predicted ? 

His college life closed in ISOl. For the statement 
tliat he>had thought of selecting the profes.sion of the- 
ology, the siu'viving members of his family, his son and 
his brother-indaw, assure me tliat tlu>re is no foundation. 
Certainly, he began at once the stuily of the law, and 
interrupted only ))y the necessity of teaching an acade- 
m\- a few months, with which he united the recreation 



15 

of recording deeds, he prosecuted it at Salisbury in the 
office of Mr. Thompson, and at Boston in the office of 
Mr, Gore, until March, 1805, when, resisting the sharp 
temptation of a clerkship, and an annual salary of fifteen 
hundred dollars, he was admitted to the bar. 

And so he has put on the robe of manhood, and has 
come to do the work of life. Of his youth there is no 
need to say more. It had been pure, happy, strenuous ; 
in many things privileged. The influence of home, of 
his father, and the excellent mother, and that noble 
brother, whom he loved so dearly, and mourned with 
such sorrow — these influences on his heart, principles, 
will, aims, were elevated and strong. At an early age, 
comparatively, the then great distinction of liberal edu- 
cation was his. His college life was brilliant and without 
a stain ; and in moving his admission to the bar, Mr. 
Gore presented him as one of extraordinary promise. 

With prospects bright, upon the world he came — 
Pure love of virtue, strong desire of fame ; 
Men watched the way his lofty mind would take, 
And all foretold the progress he would make. 

And yet, if on some day as that season was drawing to 
its close, it had been foretold to him, that before his life 
— prolonged to little more than threescore years and 
ten — should end, he should see that country, in which 
he w^as coming to act his part, expanded across a conti- 
nent; the thirteen States of 1801 multiplied to thirty- 
one ; the territory of the North-west and the great valley 
below sown full of those stars of empire ; the Mississippi 
forded, and the Sabine, and Rio Grande, and the Nueces ; 
the ponderous gates of the Rocky Mountains opened to 
shut no more ; the great tranquil sea become our sea ; 
her area seven times larger, her people five times more 



K, 

in number ; tliiit tlirough nil experiences of trial, the 
ni;:tlness of i)arty, the injustice of foreign powers, the 
vast enlargement of her borders, the antaLfonisins of 
infi'rior interest and feeling — the spirit of nationality 
v.Oidd grow stronger still and more plastic; that the 
ti«Ic of American feeling would run ever fuller; that 
Ikt agriculture Mould grow more scientific ; her arts 
ujore various and instructed, and better rewarded ; her 
t:ouiinerce winged to a wider and still -wider llight ; that 
the part she would play in human allaiis would grow 
nobler ever, and more recognized ; that in this vast 
growth of national greatness time would be found for 
th'.- higher necessities of the soul ; that her po})ular and 
1mm- higher education would go on advancing; that her 
charities and all her enterprises of philanthropy would 
go on enlarging ; that her age of lettered glory should 
fuid its auspicious dawn — and then it had been also 
foi'ctold him that even so, with her growth and strength, 
should his fame grow and lie established and cherished, 
there where she should garner up her heart ; that by 
long gradations of service and labor he should rise to be, 
before he should taste of death, of the peerless among 
her great ones ; that he should win the double honor, 
and wear the double wreath of professional and public 
su[)rcmaey ; that he should become her wisest to counsel 
and her most eloquent to persuade ; that he should come 
In !;(> called the DcfcHdcr of the Constitution and the 
pre.-erver of honorable peace; that the "austere glory 
of s;iflering" to save the Union should be his; that his 
• u-alh, al the sununit of greatness, on the verge of a 
ripe and venerable age, should be distinguished, less by 
the Hags ut half mast on ocean and lake, less by the 
minute-gun, less by tlu> public procession, and tlie ap- 
|)oinle(l eulogy, than by sudden paleness overspreading 



17 

all faces, by gushing tears, by sorrow, thoughtful, bod- 
ing, silent, the sense of desolateness, as if renown and 
grace were dead — as if the hunter's path, and the 
sailor's in the great solitude of wilderness or sea, hence- 
forward were more lonely and less safe than before — 
had this i^rediction been whispered, how calmly had 
that perfect sobriety of mind put it all aside as a per- 
nicious or idle dream ! Yet, in the fulfilment of that 
prediction is told the remaining story of his life. 

It does not come within the plan which I have 
marked out for this discourse to repeat the incidents of 
that subsequent history. The more conspicuous are 
known to you and the whole American world. Minuter 
details the time does not permit, nor the occasion re- 
quire. Some quite general views of what he became 
and achieved ; some attempt to appreciate that intellec- 
tual power, and force of will, and elaborate culture, and 
that power of eloquence, so splendid and remarkable, 
by which he wrought his work ; some tribute to the en- 
dearing and noble parts of his character; and some 
attempt to vindicate the political morality by which his 
public life was guided, even to its last great act, are all 
that I propose, and much more than I can hope w^orthily 
to accomplish. 

In coming, then, to consider what he became and 
achieved, I have always thought it was not easy to lay 
too much stress, in the first place, on that realization of 
what might have been regarded incompatible forms of 
superiority, and that exemplication of what might have 
been regarded incompatible gifts or acquirements — 
"rare in their separate excellence, wonderful in their 
special combination " — which meet us in him every- 
where. Remark, first, that eminence, rare, if not unpre- 
cedented, of the first rate, in the two substantially dis- 

9 :i: 



18 

tinct nr\(] unkindro*! professions — that of the law, and 
th.it of |)Ml)lic life. Ill surveying that ultimate ami 
ntsiljed greatness in -vvliich he stands hefore you in h s 
lull stature and at his hcst, this douhle and Mended 
on-.iniMice is the first thing that fixes the eye, and the 
l;-.'-!. When he died he was first of American lawyers, 
s\nd first of American statesmen. In both characters he 
continued — discharging the foremost part in ea(di, 
(^(•-un to the fallin-j; of the awful curtain. 15oth char- 
ncters he kept distiiK-t — the habits of mind, tlie forms 
of rea><oning, the nature of the proofs the style of elo- 
qiien«-e. Neither hurt nor changed the other. How 
much his understanding was " quickened and invigora- 
ti'd"' by the law, I have often heard him acknowledge 
and explain. But how, in spite of the law, was that 
mind, l)y other felicity, and other culture, "opened and 
hberali/ed " also ! How few of what are called the bad 
intellectual haljits of the bar he carried into the duties 
of statesmanship ! His interpretation^ of the Consti- 
tution and of treaties; his expositions of public law — 
Iiow little do you find in them, wliere, if anywhere, you 
would expect it, of the mere ingenuity, the moving of 
'' vermiculate questions," the word-catching, the .scho- 
lastic subtlety which, in the phrase of liis memorable 
quotation, 

" Can sever and divide 
A Iiair *twi.\t north and north-west side," — 

a-'cribed by satire to the profession ; and how much of 
its truer fimction, and noi)ler power of calling, history, 
language, the moral sentiment.^ rea.son, common sense, 
the hiirh spirit of ma'rnanimous nationalitv, to tlie search 
of Irt.lb ! How little do we find in his politics of au- 
othei had habit of the profession, the worst "idol of the 



19 

cave," a morbid, unreasoning, and regretful passion for 
the past, that bends and weeps over the stream, running 
irreversibly, because it will not return, and will not 
pause, and gives back to vanity every hour a changed 
and less beautiful face ! We ascribe to him certainly a 
sober and conservative habit of mind, and such he had. 
Such a habit the study and practice of the law doubtless 
does not impair. But his was my Lord Bacon's conser- 
vatism. He held with him, " that antiquity deserveth 
this reverence, that men should make a stand thereupon, 
and discover what is the best way ; but wdien the disco- 
very is w^ell taken, then to make progression." He 
would keep the Union according to the Constitution, 
not as a relic, a memorial, a tradition — not for what it 
has done, though that kindled his gratitude and excited 
his admiration — but for what it is now and hereafter 
to do, when adapted by a Avise practical philosophy to 
a wider and higher area, to larger numbers, to severer 
and more glorious probation. Who better than he has 
grasped and displayed the advancing tendencies and en- 
larging duties of America ? Who has caught — whose 
eloquence, whose genius, wdiose counsels, have caught 
more adequately the genuine inspiration of our destiny? 
Who has better expounded by what moral and pruden- 
tial policy, by what improved culture of heart and rea- 
son, by what true worship of God, by what good faith 
to all other nations, the dangers of that destiny may be 
disarmed, and its large promise laid hold on ? 

And while the lawyer did not hurt the statesman, the 
statesman did not hurt the lawyer. More ; the states- 
man did not modify, did not unrobe, did not tinge, the 
lawyer. It would not be to him that the epigram could 
have application, where the old Latin satirist nuikes the 
client complain that his lawsuit is concerning trcs cajjcUo) 



20 

— tlirco kills; ami that his advocate "with large disdain 
<»r tlRiii, is haranguing \vith loud voice and l)()th hands, 
ahout the slaughters of Canna', the war of Mithridates, 
till' jjorjuries of Ilannihal. I could never detect that in 
his discussions of law he did not just as much recognize 
authority, just as nxiously .«eek for adjudications old 
and ni'W in his favor, just as closely sift them and col- 
late them, that he nii'dit hring them to his side if he 
coiiM. or leave them amhitxuous and harndess if he could 
not ; that he did not just as rigorously ohserve the pe- 
culiar mode which that science employs in passing from 
the known to the unknown, the j)eculiar logic of the 
law, as if he had never investigated any other than 
le^ral truth hv anv other organon than legal logic in his 
life. Peculiarities of IcL^d reasoning he certainlv had, 
helonging to the peculiar structure and vast power of 
his mind ; more original thought, more discourse of prin- 
ciples, less of that more su])tlety of analysis, which is not 
restrained hy good sense, and the higher power of duly 
tempering and comhiuing one truth in a practical science 
with other truths, from ahsurdity or mischief, but still it 
was all strict and exact leual reasoning. The long habit 
of emjdoying the more popular methods, the probable 
and plausible conjectures, the approximations, the com- 
])romises of deliberative discussion, did not seem to have 
left the least trace on his vocabulary, or his reasonings, 
or his demeanor. No doubt, as a part of his whole cul- 
ture, it helpiMl to give enlargement and general power 
and elevation of mind; but the sweet stream passed 
under the bitter sea, the bitter sea pressed on the sweet 
stream, and each flowed innningled, unchanged in taste 
or color. 

1 have said that this double eminence is rnrc, if not 
unprecedented. AVe do no justice to Mr. AVebster, if 



21 

"sre do not keep this ever in mind. How many exem- 
plifications of it do you find in British public life ? The 
Earl of Chatham, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Windham, Pitt, 
Grattan, Canning, Peel — were they also, or any one, 
the acknowledo-ed leader in Westminster Hall or on the 
circuit ? And, on the other hand, would you say that 
the mere i arliamentary career of Mai sfield, or Thurlow, 
or Dunning, or Erskine, or Camden, or Curran, would 
compare in duration, constancy, variety of effort, the 
range of topics discussed, the fulness, extent, and influ- 
ence of the discussion, the influence exerted, the space 
filled, the senatorial character completely realized — 
with his ? In our own public life it is easier to find a 
parallel. Great names crowd on us in each department ; 
greater, or more loved, or more venerable, no annals 
can show. But liow few, even here, have gathered t-.e 
double wreath, and the blended fame ! 

And now, having observed the fact of this combina- 
tion of quality and excellence scarcely compatible, in- 
spect for a moment each by itself 

The professional life of Mr. Webster began in the 
spring of 1805. It may not be said to have ended until 
he died ; but I do not know that it happened to him to 
appear in court, for the trial of a cause, after his argu- 
ment of the Goodyear patent for improvements in 
the preparation of India-rubber, in Trenton, ia March, 
1852. 

There I saw, and last heard him. The thirty-four 
years which had elapsed since, a member of this col- 
lege, at home for health, I first saw^ and heard him in 
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the county of 
Essex, defending Jackman, accused of the robbery of 
Goodrich, had in almost all things changed him. The 
raven hair, the vigorous, full frame and firm tread, the 



oo 



oininent ])ut povorc 1)c:uitv of the couiiteiianco, not vut 
sealcil ^vitll tin- miildle a^o of man, the exuberant de- 
monstration of all sorts of power, which so marked 
him at first — for these, as onee they were, I exjjlored 
in vain. Vet how far higher was the interest that at- 
tended liim now : his seventy years robed, as it uere, 
vith lionor anil with love, Avitli associations of great 
pervi<-e done to the State, and of great fame gathered 
and safe ; and then the ])erfect master}' (^f the cause in its 
legal and .scientific principle^, and n all its facts; the 
admirable clearness and order in which his propositions 
■were advanced successively ; the power, the occasional 
high ethical tone, the appropriate eloquence, by which 
they were made probable and persuasive to the jutlicial 
reason, these announced the 'eaderof the American bar, 
•with every faculty and every accomplishment by which 
he had won that proud title, wholly unimpaired ; the 
eye not dim nor ihe natui'al force abated. 

1 cannot here and now trace, with any minuteness, 
the course of X v. AVebster at the bar during these forty- 
eight years from the opening of his oflice in Boscawen ; 
nor convey any impression whatever of the aggregate 
of labor which that course imposed ; or of the intellec- 
tual power which it exactcMl ; nor indicate the stages 
of his rise; nor dcliuc the time when his position at the 
sununit of tiie profession may he said to have become 
completely vindicated. You know, in general, that he 
began the ]>racti('e of the law in New Hampshire in the 
spring of 180') ; that he prosecuted it. here, in its sever- 
est school, with great diligence, and brilliant success, 
among rompetitori! of larger experience and of consum- 
mate abilitv, until ISJC. : that he then removed to Mas- 
sachusetts, and that then\ in the courts ol' that State, 
and of other States, and in those of the general govern- 






ment, and especially in the Supreme Court sitting at 
Washington, he pursued it as the calling hy which he 
was to earn his daily bread until he died. You know 
indeed that he did not pursue it exactly as one pursues 
it who confines himself to an office ; and seeks to do the 
current and miscellaneous business of a single bar. His 
professional employment, as I have often heard him say, 
was very much the preparation of opinions on important 
questions, presented from every part of the country ; and 
the trial of causes. This kind of professional life allowed 
him seasonable vacations; and it accommodated itself 
somewhat to the exactions of his other and public life. 
But it was all one long and continued practice of the 
law; the professional character was never put off ; nor 
the professional robe long unworn to the last. 

You know, too, his character as a jurist. This topic 
has been recently and separately treated, with great 
ability, by one in a high degree competent to the task ; 
the late learned Chief Justice of New Hampshire, now 
Professor of Law at Cambridge ; and it needs no addi- 
tional illustration from me. Yet, let me say, that herein, 
also, the first thing which strikes you is the union of 
diverse, and, as I have said, what might have been re- 
garded incompatible excellences. I shall submit it to 
the judgment of the universal American bar, if a care- 
fully prepared opinion of Mr. Webster, on any question 
of law whatever in the whole range of our jurispru- 
dence, would not be accepted everywhere as of the 
most commanding authority, and as the highest evi- 
dence of legal truth? I submit it to that same judg- 
ment, if for many years before his death, they w^ould not 
have rather chosen to intrust the maintenance and en- 
forcement of any important proposition of law what- 
ever, before any legal tribunal of character whatever, 



24 

to his best exertion oi' liis farultie?, than to any other 
al)ility which the whole wealtli of the prolession could 
supply ? 

And this alone completes the description of a lawyer 
and a Ibrensic orator of the first rate; hut it does not 
complete the description of his professional character. 
By the side of all this, so to speak, there was that whole 
class of (pialilies which made him fur any description of 
trial hv iurv whatever, criminal or civil, hv even a 
more universal assent, foremost. For that form of trial 
no I'aeulty was unused or needless; but you were most 
struck there to see the unrivalled leiral reason put off, 
as it were, and reappear in the form of a robust com- 
mon sense and elocpient feeling, applying itself to an 
exciting subject of business ; to see the knowledge of 
men and life by which the falsehood and veracity of wit- 
nesses, the probabilities and improbal/dities of transac- 
tions as sworn to, were discerned in a moment ; the 
direct, plain, forcible speech ; the consummate narrative, 
a department which he had particularly cultivated, and 
in which no man ever excelled him; the easy and per- 
fect analysis by which he convej'ed his side of the cause 
to the mind of the jury ; the occasional gush of strong 
feeliui:, indiLcnation. or pitv ; the masterlv, yet natural 
way, in which all the moral emotions of which his cause 
was susceptiide, were called to use. the occasional sove- 
reignty of dictation to which his convictions seemed 
sj)()ntaneously to rise. His ellbrts in tiials by jury com- 
pose a more traditional and evanescent part of his pro- 
fessional rei)ntation than his arguments on (piestions of 
law; init 1 ahnost think they were his mightiest profes- 
sional display.'^, or displays of any kind, after all. 

One such 1 stood in a relation to witness with a com- 
paratively easy curiosity, and yet with intimate and pro- 



25 



fessional knowledge of all the embarrassments of the 
case. It was the trial of John Francis Knapp, charged 
with being present, aiding, and abetting in the murder 
of Joseph White, in which Mr. Webster conducted the 
prosecution for the Commonwealth ; in the same year 
with his reply to Mr. Hayne, in the Senate ; and a few 
months later ; and when I bring to mind the incidents 
of that trial : the necessity of proving that the prisoner 
was near enough to the chamber in which the murder 
was being committed by another hand to aid in the act ; 
and was there with the intention to do so, and thus in 
point of law did aid in it — because mere accessorial 
guilt was not enough to convict him ; the difficulty of 
proving this — because the nearest point to which the 
evidence could trace him was still so distant as to war- 
rant a pretty formidable doubt whether mere curiosity 
had not carried him thither ; and whether he could in 
any useful, or even conceivable manner have cooperated 
with the actual murderer, if he had intended to do so ; 
and because the only mode of rendering it probable that 
he was there w^ith a purpose of guilt was by showing 
that he was one of the parties to a conspiracy of mur- 
der, whose very existence, actors, and objects, had to 
be made out by the collation of the widest possible 
range of circumstances — some of them pretty loose — 
and even if he was a conspirator it did not quite neces- 
sarily follow that any active participation was assigned 
to him for his part, any more than to his .brother, who, 
confessedly took no such part — the great number of 
witnesses to be examined and cross-examined, a duty 
devolving wholly on him; the quick and sound judg- 
ment demanded and supplied to determine what to use 
and what to reject of a mass of rather unmanageable 
materials; the points in the law of evidence to be 

3 



2G 

argued — in tlic course of whicli ho luadc an appeal to 
the Ik'iuh on the complete iinpunity which the rejection 
of the ])nsoner's confes.>^ion would give to the murder, 
in a .style of dignity and energy, I should rather say, of 
grandeur which I never heard him equal hefore or after; 
the high ahility and fidelity with which every part of 
the defence was conducted; and the great final sum- 
ming up to which he brought, and in which he needed, 
the utmost exertion of every faculty he possessed to 
persuade the jury that the obligation of that duty the 
sense of which, he said, "pursued us ever: it is omni- 
present like the Deity : if we take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
duty performed or duty violated is still with us for our 
hap})iness or misery" — to persuade them that this obli- 
gation demanded that on his proofs they should convict 
the prisoner : to which he brought first the profound 
belief of his guilt, without which he could not have 
prosecuted him ; then skill consunnnate in inspiring them 
with a desire or a willingness to be instrumental in de- 
tecting that guilt; and to lean on him in the eflbrt to 
detect it ; then every resource of professional ability to 
break the force of the propositions of the defence, and 
to establish the truth of his own: inferring a conspiracy 
to which the prisoner was a party, from circumstances 
acutely ridiculed by the able counsel opposing him as 
" Stufl'" — l)ut woven bv him into strong and uniform 
tissue ; and then bridging over from the conspiracy to 
the not. very necessary inference th;it the particular con- 
spirat<n' on trial Ava< at his ])ost, in execution of it. to 
aid and aljct — the picture of the murder with which 
he begun — not for rhetorical display, but to inspire 
soleuuiity, and horror, and a desire to detect and punish 
for justice and for security; the sublime exhortation to 



27 



duty with wliicli he closed — resting on the luiiversalit}^, 
and anthoritativeness and eternity of its obhgation — 
which left in every juror's mind the impression that it 
was the duty of convicting in this particular case the 
sense of which would be with him in the hour of death, 
» and in the judgment, and forever — with these recollec- 
tions of that trial I cannot help thinking it a more diffi- 
cult and higher effort of mind than that more famous 
" Oration for the Crown." 

It would be not unpleasing nor inappropriate to pause, 
and recall the names of some of that succession of com- 
petitors by whose rivalry the several stages of his pro- 
fessional life were honored and exercised ; and of some 
of the eminent judicial persons who presided over that 
various and high contention. Time scarcely permits 
this; but in the briefest notice I must take occasion to 
say that perhaps the most important influence — cer- 
tainly the most important early influence — on his pro- 
fessional traits and fortunes, was that exerted by the 
great general abilities, impressive character, and legal 
genius of Mr. Mason. Who he was you all know. How 
much the jurisprudence of New Hampshire owes to 
Mm ; what deep traces he left on it ; how much he did 
to promote the culture, and to preserve the integrity of 
the old common law ; to adapt it to your wants, and 
your institutions ; and to construct a system of practice 
by which it was administered wdth extraordinary energy 
and effectiveness for the discovery of truth, and the 
enforcement of right; you of the legal profession of 
this State will ever be proud to acknowledge. Another 
forum in a neighboring Commonwealth, witnessed and 
profited by the last labors, and enlarged studies of the 
consummate lawyer and practiser ; and at an earlier day 
the Senate, the country, had recognized his vast practi- 



28 

cal \vi>«l(jiii and saj^acitv, tlif IVuit of tlie liif^licst intcllec- 
tiial (.'iidowiiiciits, matured tliouglit, and profound obser- 
vation ; his fidelity to the obhgations of that party con- 
nection to wliieh he was attached ; his fidelity, through 
all his life, still more conspicuous, and still more admi- 
rable, to the higher obligations of a considerate and en- 
larged patriotism. He had been more than fourteen 
years at the bar, when Mr. Webster came to it; he dis- 
cerned instantly what manner of man his youthful com- 
petit<jr was; he admitted him to his intimate friendship ; 
and paid him the unequivocal compliment, and did him 
the real kindness of compelling him to the utmost exer- 
tion of his diligence and capacity by calling out against 
him all his own. " The proprieties of this occasion " — 
these are Mr. AVebster's words in presenting the resolu- 
tions of the Suflblk Bar upon Mr. Mason's death — '• com- 
pel me, with whatever reluctance, to refrain from the 
indulgence of the personal feelings which arise in my 
heart upon the death of one with whom I have culti- 
vated a sincere, affectionate, and unbroken friendship 
from the day when I commenced my own profe.-^sional 
career to the closin<i: hour of his lite. I will not sav of 
the advantages which I have derived from his intercourse 
and conversation all that Mr. Fox said of Edmund Burke, 
but I am bound to say, that of my own professional dis- 
cipline and attainments, whatever they ma}^ be, I owe 
much to that close attention to the discharge of my du- 
ties which I was compelled to pay for nine successive 
years, from day to day, by Mr. ^lason's efforts and argu- 
nu'uts at the same bar. 1 must have been unintelligent 
indeed, not to have learned somethin<j; from the constant 
displays of that power which I had so nuich occasion to 
sec and ivv].'" 

I reckon next to his, for the earlier time of his life, 



29 

the influence of the learned and accomplished Smith ; 
and next to these — some may believe greater — is that 
of Mr. Justice Story. That extraordinary person had 
been admitted to the bar in Essex in Massachusetts in 
1801 j and he was engaged in man}^ trials in the county 
of Rockingham in th's State before Mr. AYebster had as- 
sumed his own established position. Their political 
opinions differed ; but such was his affluence of knowl- 
edge ah^eady ; such his stimulant enthusiasm ; he was 
burning with so incredible a passion for learning, and 
fame, that the influence on the still young Webster was 
instant -, and it was great and permanent. It was re- 
ciprocal too ; and an intimacy began that attended the 
whole course of honor through which each, in his several 
sphere, ascended. Parsons he saw, also, but rarely ; and 
Dexter oftener, and with more nearness of observation, 
while 3'et laying the foundation of his own mind and 
character ; and he shared largely in the universal admi- 
ration of that time, and of this, of their attainments, and 
genius, and diverse greatness. 

As he came to the grander practice of the national 
bar, other competition was to be encountered. Other 
names begin to solicit us; other contention; higher 
prizes. It would be quite within the proprieties of this 
discourse to remember the parties, at least, to some of 
the higher causes, by wdiich his ultimate professional 
fame was built up ; even if I could not hope to convey 
any impression of the novelty and difficulty of the 
questions which they involved, or of the positive addi- 
tion which the argument, and judgment, made to the 
treasures of our constitutional and general jurispru- 
dence. But there is only one of which I have time to 
say any thing, and that is the case which established the 
inviolability of the charter of Dartmouth College by the 

3 =="• 



q 







Legislature of the State of New Ilamjishire. Acts of 
the I^^gislature, pa&scd in the year 1810, hail invatlcd 
its charter. A .suit was brought to test theu- validity. 
It was tried in the Supreme Court of the State ; a judg- 
ment was given against the college, and this was ap- 
j)ealed to the Supreme Federal Court by writ of error. 
Upon .solemn argument the charter was decided to be a 
contract whose obligation a State may not impair ; the 
acts were decided to be invalid as an attempt to impair 
it, and you hold your charter under that decision to-day. 
How much Mr. Webster contributed to that result, how 
much the effort advanced his own distinction at the bar, 
you all know. Well, as if of yesterday, I remember 
how it was written home from AVashington, that '• Mr. 
AVebster closed a legal argument of great power by a 
peroration which charmed and melted his audience." 
Often since 1 have heard vague account.s, not much more 
satisfactory, of the speech and the scene. I was aware 
that the report of his argument, as it was published, did 
not contain the actual peroration, and I supposed it lost 
forever. By the great kindness of a learned and ex- 
cellent i)erson, Dr. Chauncy A. ( ioodrich, a professor in 
Yale College, with whom I had not the honor of ac- 
quaintance, although his virtues, accomplishments, and 
most useful life, were well known to me, I can read to 
you the words whose power, when those lips spoke them, 
so many owned, although they could not repeat them. 
As those lips .spoke them, we shall hear them nevermore, 
but no utterance can extinguish their simple, sweet, and 
perfect jjcauty. Let me first, l)ring the general scene 
before you, and then 30U will hear the rest in Mr. 
Goodrich's description. It was in 181S. in the tliirty- 
scventh year of Mr. AVebster's age. It was adihe.>^.>^ed to 
a tril)unal presided over by Marshall, assisted by AVash- 



31 

ington, Livingston, Johnson, Stoiy, Todd, and Duvall — 
a tribunal unsurpassed on earth in all that gives llustra- 
tion to a bench of law, and sustained and venerated by 
a noble bar. He had called to his aid the ripe and 
beautiful culture of Hopkinson; and of his opponents 
was William Wirt, then and ever of the leaders of the 
bar, who, with faculties and accomplishments fitting him 
to adorn and gu le public life, abounding in deep pro- 
fessional learning, and in the most various and elegant 
acquisitions — a ripe and splendid orator, made so by 
genius and the most assiduous culture — consecrated all 
to the service of the law. It was before that ribunal, 
and in presence of an audience select ; nd critical, among 
whom, it is to be borne in mind, were some graduates of 
the colleo'e, who were attendins; to assist asrainst her, 
that he opened the cause. I gladly proceed in the 
w^ords of Mr. Goodrich. 

" Before going to Washington, which I did chiefly for 
the sake of hearing Mr. Webster, I was told that, in 
arguing the case at Exeter, New Hampshire, he had left 
the whole court room in tears at the conclusion of his 
speech. This, I confess, struck me unpleasantly — any 
attempt at pathos on a purely legal question like this, 
seemed hardly in good taste. On my way to Washing- 
ton, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Webster. We were 
together for several days in Philadelphia, at the house 
of a common friend ; and as the college question was 
one of deep interest to literary men, we conversed often 
and largely on the subject. As he dwelt upon the lead- 
ing points of the case, in terms so calm, simple, and pre- 
cise, I said to myself more than once, in reference to the 
story I had heard, 'Whatever may have seemed ap- 
propriate in defending the college at liome, and on her 



32 

own ^noiiiid, til If uill be no appeal tu the feelings of 
.h cige Marshall ami his associates at Washington.' "Phe 
Su})reine Court of the United States held its session, that 
M'in y. 11 a moan a; artment of moderate size — the 
Capitol not having been built after its destruction m 
I 1!. TIiJ audience, hen he case came on, ^vas 
therefore small, consistin chielly of legal n en, the clile 
of the profession throughout the country. Mr, Webster 
entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and 
dignified conversation. Pis matter -was so completely 
at his connnand that he scarcely looked at his brief, but 
Ave ii on lor n ore ihan .'bur Innir- Avith a statement so 
luminous, and chain of reaso ing so easy to be under- 
stood, and yet api)roaching so nearly to absolute dem- 
onstration, that he seemed to carry Avith him every man 
of his audience Avithout the slightest eflbrt or weariness 
on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense 
of the term ; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a 
>entence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled 
into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought ; 
but he instantly fell back into the tone of earnest con- 
versation, which ran throughout the great body of his 
s])cech. A ^'ngle circumstance will show you the clear- 
ness and absorbing power of his argument. 

" I ob.^orve 1 t!;at Judge Story, at the open'ng of the 
ciisc, had prepared himself, pen in hand, as if to take 
copious minutes. Hour after hour I saw him lixed in 
the same attitude, but, so far as I could perceive, with 
not a note on his paper. The argument closed, and J 
could not ilhcover Ihal he hud lahen a a'uifjle note. Others 
around me remarked the same thing, and it was among 
the Oil dil.s of Washington, that a friend spoke to him of 
the fact with surprise, when the .ludge remarked, 'every 
thing was so clear, and so ea.sy to remember, that not 






a note seemed necessary, and, in fact, I thought httle or 
nothing about my notes.' 

" The aro-ument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some 
moments silent before the Court, while every eye was 
fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the 
Chief Justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus : — 

" * This, Sir, is my case ! It is the case, not merely of 
that humble institution, it is the c se of every college in 
our land. It is more. It is the case of every elee- 
mosynary institution throughout our country — of all 
those great charities founded by the piety of our ances- 
tors to alleviate human mise'ry, and scatter blessings 
along the pathway of life. It is more ! It is, in some 
sense, the case of every man among us who has pro- 
perty of wdiich he may be stripped, for the question is 
simply this : Shall our State Legislature be allowed to 
take that which is not their own, to turn it from its 
original use, and apply it to such eiuls or purposes as 
they, in their discretion, shall see fit ! 

"'Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is 
weak ; it is in your hands ! I know it is one of the 
lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You 
may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry 
through your work ! You must extinguish, one after 
another, all those great lights of science which, for more 
than a century, have thrown their radiance over our 
land ! 

'" It is. Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, 
there are those ivho love it .' 

" Here the feelin<2;s which he had thus far succeeded in 
keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered ; his firm 
cheeks trembled with emotion ; his eyes were filled with 
tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the 
utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which 



34 

iniii;lit save liiin from an uninanly burst of fooling. I 
■will not attempt to give you the few broken words of 
tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attach- 
ment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled 
throughout with the recollections of father, mother, 
brother, and all the trials and privations through which 
lie had made his way into life. Every one saw that it 
was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, 
which souLdit relief in words and tears. 

"The court room <luring these two or three minutes 
presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice 
Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure bent over as if 
to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his 
cheek expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with 
tears ; i\Ir. Justice Washington at his side, -with his small 
and emaciated frame and countenance more like marble 
tlian I ever saw on any other human being — leaning 
forward with an eager, troubled look ; and the remain- 
der of the Court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it 
were, toward a single point, while the audience below 
were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath 
the be ch to catc i each look, and every movement of 
the speakei's face. If a painter could give us the scene 
on canvas — those forms and countenances, and Daniel 
Webster as he then stood in the midst, it would be one 
of the most touching pictures in the history "of elo- 
quence. One thing it taught mo, that the pathetic de- 
pends not merely on the words uttered, but still more 
on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. 
There was not one amonii; the stron<i-minded men of 
that assem1)ly who could think it unmaiiiy to Aveep, 
when he saw standing before liiai the man who had 
made sucli iin argument, melted into the tenderness of 
a child. 



35 



" Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and 
fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said, in that 
deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of 
an audience : — 

"'Sir, I know not how others may feel,' (c^lancing at 
the opponents of the college before him,) *but, for my- 
self, when I see my alma mater surrounded, like CaBsar 
in the senate house, by those who are reiterating stab 
upon stab, I would not, for this right hand, have her 
turn to me, and say, Et hi quoqiie mi fill I And thou too, my 
son ! ' 

"He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness 
throughout the room for some moments ; every one 
seemed to be slowly recovering himself, and ct mino- 
gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and 
feelini;-." 

It was while Mr. Webster was ascendino; throug-h the 
long gradations of the legal profession to its highest 
rank, that by a parallel series of display on a stage, and 
in parts totally distinct, by other studies, thoughts, and 
actions he rose also to be at his death the irst of Amer- 
ican Statesmen. The last of the mighty rivals was dead 
before, and he stood alone. Give this aspect also of his 
greatness a passing glance. His public lifj beg u in 
May, 1813, in the House of Representatives in Congress, 
to which this State had elected him. It ended when he , 
died. If you except the interval between his removal 
from New Hampshire and his election in Massachusetts, 
it was a public life of forty years. By what political 
morality, and by what enlarged patriotism, embracing 
the whole country, that life was guided, I shall con- 
sider hereafter. Let me now fix your attention rather 
on the magnitude and variety and actual value of the 



30 

^service. Consitler that from the day lie went upon the 
Conunittee of Foreign Kehitiun-s, in 1813, in time of 
Avar, and more and more, the longer he Hved and the 
higlier he ro.se, lie wa^ a man whose great talents and 
devotion to public duty placed and kept hhn in a po- 
sition of associated or sole command ; command in 
the political connection to "which he belonged, com- 
mand in opposition, command in power; and appreciate 
the responsibilities which that implies, what care, what 
prudence, what mastery of the whole ground — ex- 
acting for the CO duct of a party, as Gibbon says of 
Fox, abilities and civil discretion equal to the conduct 
of an empire. Consider the work he did in that ife of 
forty years — the range of subjects investigated and 
di.scu.ssed : composing the whole theorj' and practice of 
our organic and administrative politics, foreign and do- 
mestic : the vast body of instructive thought he pro- 
duced and put in possession ol' the country; how much 
he achieved in Congress as well as at the bar, to fix the 
true interpretation, as well as to impre.^^s the transcen- 
dent value of the Constitution itself, a- much altoi::ether 
as any jurist or statesman since its adoption ; how much 
to e.<^taljlish in the general mind the great doctrine that 
the government of the United State ■; is a government 
proper, estal->lished l>y the people of the States, not a 
compact between sovereign conuuunilies, — that within 
its limits it is supreme, and that whether it is within its 
limits or not, in any given exertion of it.self, is to be 
determined by the Supreme Court of the United States 
— the ultiuKite arbiter in the last resort — from which 
there is no appeal but to revolution; how much he did 
in the course ol' the di.^cussions which grew out <»f the 
pro})osed mission to Panama, and, at a later day, out of 
the removal of the deposits, to \)\arv the executive 



department of the government on its true basis, and 
under its true limitations ; to secure to that department 
all its just powers on the one hand, and on the other 
hand to vindicate to the legislative department, and 
especially to the Senate, all that belong to them ; to 
arrest the tendencies which he thoug-ht at one time 
threatened to substitute the government of a single 
will, of a single person of great force of character and 
boundless popularity, and of a numerical majorit}^ of 
the people, told by the head, without intermediate insti- 
tutions of any kind, judicial or senatorial, in place of 
the elaborate system of checks and balances, by which 
the Constitution aimed at a government of laws, and not 
of men ; how much, attracting less popular attention, 
but scarcely less important, to complete the great work 
which experience had shown to be left unfinished by 
the judiciary act of 1789, by providing for the j)nnish- 
ment of all crimes against the United States ; how much 
for securing a safe currency and a true financial system, 
not only by the promulgation of sound opinions, but by 
good sj)ecific measures adopted, or bad ones defeated ; 
how much to develop the vast material resources of the 
country, and to push forward the planting of the West 
— not troubled by any fear of exhausting old States — 
by a liberal policy of public lands, by vindicating the 
constitutional power of Congress to make or aid in 
making large classes of internal improvements, and by 
acting on that doctrine uniformly from 1813, when- 
ever a road was to be built, or a rapid suppressed, 
or a canal to be opened, or a breakwater or a light- 
house set up above or below the flow of the tide, if 
so far beyond the ability of a single State, or of so 
wide utility to commerce and labor as to rise to the 
rank of a work general in its influences — another tie 

4 



38 

of union because another proof of the beneficence of 
union ; how much to jiidttM-t the vast mechanical au'l 
nianufucturini^ interests of the country, a value of many 
hun<h-e(ls of millions — after liaving been lured into 
existence aLCiiinst liis counsels, a^rainst his seience of 
political economy, by a policy ol" artificial encourage- 
ment — from being sacrificed, and the pursuits and plans 
of large regions and communities broken up, and the 
acquired skill of the country squandered by a sudden 
and capricious ^vithdra^val of the promise of the govern- 
ment ; how much lor the right performance of the most 
delicate :iud diflicult of all tasks, the ordering of the 
foreign aflliirs of :i nation, free, sensitive, self-conscious, 
recognizing, it is true, public law and a morality of the 
iState, binding on the conscience of the State, yet aspir- 
ing to power, eminence, and conunand, its whole frame 
filled full and all on fire witli American feeling, sympa- 
thetic Avith lil)erty everywhere — how much for the 
TvAit orderin<i: of the foreisi-n affairs of such a State — 
aiming in all his policy, from his speech on the Greek 
question in 1823, to his letters to M. llulsemann in 
1850, to occupy the high, plain, yet dizzy ground which 
separates influence from intervention, to avow and pro- 
mulgate warm good will to humanity, Avherever striving 
to be free, to iiKpiiic authentically into the history of 
its struggles, to lake oOicMal and avowed pains to ascer- 
tain the nioiiK'ut when its success may be recognized, 
consistently, ever, with the great code that keeps the 
peace of the world, abstaining from every thing which 
shall give any nation a right under the law of nations 
to litter on(> word of complaint, still less to retaliate by 
war — the sympathy, but also the neutrality, of Wash- 
ington — how ujurli to compose with honor a concur- 
rence of dilliculties with the first power in the world, 



39 

which any thing less than the highest degree of discre- 
tion, firmnes»s, abihty, and means of commanding respect 
and confidence at home and abroad would inevitably 
have conducted to the last calamity — a disputed bound- 
ary line of many hundred miles, from the St. Croix to 
the Rocky Mountains, which divided an exasperated and 
impracticable border population, enlisted the pride and 
affected the interests and controlled the politics of par- 
ticular States, as well as pressed on the peace and honor 
of the nation, which the most popular administrations of 
the era of the quietest and best public feelings, the times 
of Monroe and of Jackson, could not adjust ; which had 
grown so complicated with other topics of excitement 
that one false step, right or left, w^ould have been a step 
down a precipice — this line settled forever — the claim 
of England to search our ships for the suppression of 
the slave-trade silenced forever, and a new engagement 
entered into by treaty, binding the national faith to 
contribute a speciucr navar'iws^ for putting an end to 
the great crime of man — the long practice of England 
to enter an American ship and impress from its crew, 
terminated forever; the deck henceforth guarded sa- 
credly and completely by the flag — how much by pro- 
found discernment, by eloquent speech, by devoted life 
to strengthen the ties of union, and breathe the fine and 
strong spirit of nationality through all our numbers — 
how much, most of all, last of all, after the war with 
Mexico, needless if his counsels had governed, had ended 
in so vast an acquisition of territory, in presenting to 
the two great antagonist sections of our country so vast 
an area to enter on, so imperial a prize to contend for, 
and the accursed fraternal strife had begun — how much 
then, when rising to the measure of a true, and difficult, 
and rare greatness, remembering that he had a country 



40 

■to save as well as a local constituency to gratify, laying 
all the wealth, all the hopes, of an illustrious life on the 
altar of a hazardous patriotism, he sought and won the 
more exceeding glory which now attends — which in 
tlie next age shall more conspicuously attend — his 
name who composes an agitated and saves a sinking 
land — recall this series of conduct and inlluences, study 
them carefully in their facts and results — the readiuir 
of years — and 30U attain to a true appreciation of this 
aspect of his greatness — his public character and life. 

For such a review the eulogy of an hour has no 
room. Such a task demands research; details; proofs; 
illustrations; a long labor — a volume of history com- 
posed according to her severest laws — setting down 
nothing, depreciating nothing, in malignity to the dead ; 
suppressing nothing and falsifying nothing in adulation 
of the dead ; professing fidelity incorrupt — unswerved 
by hatred or by love, yet able to measure, able to glow 
in the contemplation ot^'^Vrile gredfftess and a vast and 
varied and useful public life ; such a history as the 
genius and judgment and delicate private and public 
morality of Everett — assisted by his perfect knowledge 
of the facts — not disqualified by his long friendship 
unchilled to the last hour — such a history as he 
might construct. 

Two or three suggestions, occurring on the most 
general observation of this as2)ect of his eminence, you 
Avill tolerate as 1 leave the topic. 

lieiiiail< how very large a proi)ortion of all this class 
of his acts, are wholly beyond, and outside, of the pro- 
fession of the luw ; demanding studies, experience, a 
turn of mind, a cast of (jualities and character, such as 
that profession neither gives, nor exacts. Some single 
speeches in Congress of consummate ability, have been 



41 

made by great lawyers, drawing for the purpose, only 
on the learning, accomplishments, logic, and eloquence 
of the forum. Such was Chief Justice, then Mr. Mar- 
shall's argument in the case of Jonathan Robbins — 
turning on the interpretation of a treaty, and the con- 
stitutional power of the executive ; a demonstration 
if there is any in Euclid — anticipating the masterly 
judgments in the cause of Dartmouth College, or of 
Gibbons and Ogden, or of Maculloch and the State of 
Maryland ; but such an one as a lawyer like him — if 
another there was — could have made iu his profes- 
sional capacity at the bar of tlie House, although he 
had never reflected on practical politics an hour in his 
life. Such somewhat was William Pinkney's speech in 
the House of Representatives on the treaty-making 
power, in 1815, and his two more splendid displays, in 
the Senate, on the Missouri question, in 1820, the last 
of which I heard Mr. Clay pronounce the greatest he 
ever heard. They were pieces of legal reasoning, on 
questions of constitutional law ; decorated of course by 
a rhetoric which Hortensius might have envied, and 
Cicero would not have despised ; but they were profes- 
sional at last. To some extent this is true of some of 
Mr. Webster's ablest speeches in Congress ; or, more 
accurately, of some of the more important portions of 
some of his ablest. I should say so of a part of that , 
on the Panama Mission ; of the reply to Mr. Hayne 
even ; and of almost the whole of that reply to Mr. 
Calhoun on the thesis, " the Constitution not a com- 
pact between sovereign States;" the whole series of dis- 
cussion of the constitutional power of the Executive, 
and the constitutional power of the Senate, growing out 
of the removal of the deposits and the supposed ten- 
dencies of our system towards a centralization of gov- 



•12 

eminent in a Pri'-ick'nt, and a majority of the people — 
marked, all of them, by amazing ability. To these the 
lawyer who could demonstrate that the Charter of this 
College is a contract witliin the Constitution, or that 
the Steamboat Mcmopoly usurped upon the executed 
power of Congress to regulate commerce, was already 
equal — but to have been the leader, or of the leaders 
of his political connection for thirty years ; to have been 
able to instruct and guide on every question of policy 
as well as law, which interested the nation in all that 
time; every question of finance; of currency; of the 
lands; of the development and care of our resources and 
labour; to have been of strength to help to lead his 
country jjy the hand, up to a position of influence and 
attraction on the highest places of earth, yet to keep 
her peace, and to keep her honor ; to have been able 
to emulate the prescriptive and awful renown of the 
founders of States by doing something which will be 
admitted, when some generations have passed, even 
more than now, to have contributed to preserve the 
State — for all this another man was needed — and he 
stands forth another and the same. 

I am hereafter to speak separately of the political 
morality which guided him ever, but T would say a 
word now on two portions of his public life, one of 
' which has been the sul)ject of accusatory, the other of 
disparaging criticism, unsound — uidvind — in both in- 
stances. 

The first comprises his course in ri'gard to a protec- 
tive policy, lie opposed a tariff of protection it is said, 
In ISIG, and 1820, and |S2I ; and he opposed, in 1S28, 
a sudden and fatal repeal of such a tarifi"; and tluMc- 
upon 1 have seen it written that '• this proved him a 
man with no great comprehensive ideay of political 



43 

economy ; who took the fleetmg interests, and transient 
ojDinions of the hour for his norms of conduct;" "who 
had no sober and serious convic lions of his own." I 
have seen it more decorously Avritten, " that his opinions 
on this subject were not determined by general princi- 
ples, but by a consideration of immediate sectional in- 
terests." 

I will not answer this by what Scaliger says of Lipsius, 
the arrogant pedant who dogmatized on the deeper po- 
litics as he did on the text of Tacitus and Seneca. Ncque 
est poliiicus ; nee potest qiiiequam in politid ; niJill possimt pe- 
dantes in ipsis rebus : nee ego, nee alius doctus possumus scri- 
lere in poUticis. I say only that the case totally fails to 
give color to the charge. The reasonings of Mr. Web- 
ster in 181G, 1820, and 1824, express that on mature 
reflection, and due and appropriate study he had em- 
braced the opinion that it was needless and unwise to 
force American manufactures, by regulation, prematurely 
to life. Bred in a commercial community ; taught from 
his earliest hours of thought to rearard the care of com- 
merce, as, in point of fact, a leading object and cause of 
the Union : to observe around him no other forms of 
material industry than those of commerce ; navigation ; 
fisheries ; agriculture, and a few plain and robust me- 
chanical arts, he would come to the study of the politi- 
cal economy of the subject with a certain preoccupation 
of mind perhaps ; so coming he did study it at its well 
heads, and he adopted his conclusions sincerely, and an- 
nounced them strongly. 

His opinions were overruled by Congress; and a 
national policy was adopted, holding out all conceivable 
promise of permanence, under which vast and sensitive 
investments of capital were made ; the expectations, the 
employments, the habits, of whole ranges of States were 



44 

recast ; an industry, new to us, springing, immature, had 
been advanced just so far, that if deserted, at that 
moment, there must follow a squandering of skill ; 
a squandering of property ; an aggregate of destruction, 
senseless, needless, and unconscientious — such as marks 
the worst form of n>voliition. On these facts, at a later 
day, he thought th;it that industry, tlic child of Clovern- 
ment, should not thus capriciously be deserted. "The 
dut}' of the government," he said, "at the present mo- 
ment would sceui to he to preserve, not to destroy ; to 
maintain the position which it has assumed ; and for one 
I shall feel it an indispensable o])ligation to hold it 
steady, as far as in my power, to that degree of protec- 
tion which it has undertaken to bestow." 

And does this prove that these original opinions were 
hasty; shallow; insincere; unstudied? Consistently 
with every one of them ; consistently with the true 
spirit, and all the aims, of the science of political econ- 
omy itself; consistently with every duty of sober, high, 
earnest, and moral statesmanshi[), might not he who 
resisted the making of a tariff in ]81C, deprecate its 
abandonment in 1828? Does not Adam Smith himself 
admit tliat it i^ '' nuddr Jit for (Jcllhcndion how far or in 
what manner, it may be proper to restore that free im- 
jjortation after it has been for some time interrupted?" 
implying that a general principle of national wealth 
may be displaced or modified by special circumstances 
— but would these censors therefore cry out that he 
had no "great and comprehensive ideas of political econ- 
omy," and was willing to ])e '"determined not by gene- 
ral princi[iles, but by immediate interests?" Because a 
fatlnT advices his son ai^-ainst an earlv and injudicious 
marriage; does it logieally f(»ll()\v, or is it ethically right, 
that after his advice has been disregarded, he is to 



45 

recommend desertion of the yomig ^Yife, and the young 
child ? I do not appreciate the beauty and " compre- 
hensiveness" of those scientific ideas which forget that 
the actual and vast " interests" of the community are 
exactl}^ what the legislator has to protect ; that the con- 
crete of things must limit the foolish wantonness of a 
imori theor}^ ; that that department of politics, wdiich 
has for its object the promotion and distribution of the 
wealth of nations, may very consistently, and very sci- 
entifically preserve what it would not have created. He 
who accuses Mr. Webster m this behalf of " having no 
sober and serious convictions of his own," must afford 
some other proof than his opposition to the introduc- 
tion of a policy ; and then his willingness to preserve 
it after it had been introduced, and five hundred millions 
of property, or, how^ever, a countless sum had been in- 
vested vmder it, or become dependent on its continu- 
ance. 

I should not think that I consulted his true fame if I 
"did not add that as he came to observe the practical 
workings of the protective policy more closely than at 
first he had done ; as he came to observe the working and 
influences of a various manufacturing and mechanical 
labor ; to see how it employs and develops every faculty ; 
finds occupation for every hour; creates or diffuses 
and disciplines ingenuity, gathering up every fragment 
of mind a7id time so that nothing be lost; how a steady 
and ample home market assists agriculture ; how all the 
great employments of man are connected by a kindred 
tie, so that the tilling of the land, navigation, foreign, 
coastwise and interior commerce, all grow with the 
growth, and strengthen with the strength of the indus- 
try of the arts — he came to appreciate, more ade- 
quately than at first, how this form of labor contributes 



46 

to wc'iiltli ; powor ; enjoyment; a great civilization ; he 
came more justly to grasp the conception of how con- 
summate a rlestruction it would cause — liow senseless, 
liow unphilosophical, how iuimoral — to arrest it sud- 
denly and cai)riciously — after it had been lured into 
life; how wiser — how far truer to the principles of the 
science which seeks to augment the wealth of the State, 
to refuse to destroy so immense an accumulation of that 
wealth. In this sense, and in this wav, 1 believe his 
opinions were matured and modified ; but it does not 
quite follow that they were not, in every period, con- 
scientiously formed and held, or that they were not in 
the actual circumstances of each period philosophically 
just, and practically wise. 

The other act of his public life to which I allude is 
his negotiation of the Treaty of Washington, in IS 12, 
with Great Britain. This act, the country, the world, 
has judged, and has applauded. Of lii.s administrative 
ability ; his discretion ; temper; civil courage ; his power 
of exar-ting respect and confidence from those with 
whom he comnnmicated ; and of inlluencing their rea- 
son ; his knowledge of the true interests and true gran- 
deur of the two great parties to the negotiation ; of the 
States of the Union more immediately concerned, and 
of the world whose chief concern is ])eace ; aiid of the 
feelings, and disparaging criticisms of the hour, in the 
intrepidity with which he encountered the di.sappointed 
consciousness that be had done a good and large deed, 
and earned a permanent and honest renown — of these 
it is the truest and nu)st unfortunate single exemplifica- 
tion which remains of him. Concerning: its dillicultv, 
impoitaiicr, and merits oi' all sorts, there were at the 
time, few dissenting opinions among those most con- 
versant with the sul)ject, although there were some; to- 



47 

day there are fewer still. They are so few — a single 
sneer by the side of his grave, expressing that " a man 
who makes such a bargain is not entitled to any great 
glory among diplomatists," is all that I can call to mind 
— that I will not arrest the course of your feelings here 
and now by attempting to refute that "sneer" out of 
the history of the hour and scene. " Standing here," 
he said in April, 1846, in the Senate of the United 
States to which he had returned — " standing here to- 
day, in this Senate, and speaking in behalf of the ad- 
ministration of which I formed a part, and in behalf of 
the two houses of Congress who sustained that adminis- 
tration, cordially and effectively, in every thing relating 
to this treaty, I am willing to appeal to the public men 
of the age, whether in 1842, and in the city of Washing- 
ton, something was not done for the suppression of 
crime ; for the true exposition of the principles of public 
law ; for the freedom and security of commerce on the 
ocean, and for the peace of the world ! " In that forum 
the appeal has been heard, and the praise of a diplo- 
matic achievement of true and permanent glory, has 
been irreversibly awarded to him. Beyond that forum 
of the mere "public men of the age," by the larger juris- 
diction, the general public, the same praise has been 
awarded. S'unt hie eiiam sua prcemia laiidi. That which 
I had the honor to say in the Senate, in the session of 
1843, in a discussion concerning this treaty, is true, and 
applicable, now as then. " Why should I, or why should 
any one, assume the defence of a treaty here in this 
body, which but just now, on the amplest consideration, 
in the confidence and calmness of executive session, was 
approved by a vote so decisive ? Sir, the country by a 
vote far more decisive, in a proportion very far beyond 
thirty-nine to nine, has approved your approval. Some 



48 

there arc, some few — T speak not now of any moinbcr 
of this Senate — rcstles.-?, .sellit^li, reekless, •• the cankers 
of a eahn world and a long peace," pining with thirst of 
notoriety, .slaves to their hatred of England, to whom 
the treaty is distasteful; to whom any treaty, and all 
things but the glare and clamor, the vain pomp and 
hollow circumstance ol" war — all hut these would be 
distasteful and (heary. But the country is with you in 
this act of wisdom and glory; its intelligence; its 
morality; itshdjor; its good men ; the thoughtful ; the 
l)hilanthropic ; the discreet; the masses, are with you." 
"It confirms the purpose of the wise and good of both 
nations to be for ever at peace with one another, and to 
put away forever all war from the kindred races : war 
the most ridiculous of blunders ; the most tremendous 
of crimes ; the most comprehensive of evils." 

And now to him who in the solitude of his library 
depreciates this act, lirst, because there was no danger of 
a war with England, I answer that according to the 
overwhelming weight of that kind of evidence by 
which that kind of question must be tried, that is by 
the judgment of the great body of well-informed public 
men at that moment in Congress; in the Government ; 
in diplomatic situation — our relations to that power had 
become so delicate, and so urgent, that unless soon ad- 
justed by negotiation there was real danger of war. 
Against such evidence what is the value of the specula- 
tion of a private person, ten years afterwards, in the 
shade of his general studies, whatever his sagacity ? The 
temper of the border population; the tendencies to dis- 
order ill Canada, stimulated by sympathizers on our 
side of the line; the entrance on our territorv of a IJrit- 
ish armed force in IS-IT; cuttiuLi: the Caroline out of 
licr harbor, and scndiu'-- her down the falls; the arrest 



49 

of McLeod in 1841, a British subject, composing part of 
that force, by the government of New York, and the 
threat to hang him, which a person high in office in 
England, declared, in a letter which was shown to me, 
would raise a cry for war from " whig, radical, and tory" 
which no ministry could resist ; growing irritation 
caused by the search of our vessels under color of sup- 
pressing the slave-trade ; the long controversy, almost 
as old as the government, about the boundary line — so 
conducted as to have at last convinced each disputant 
that the other was fraudulent and insincere ; as to have 
enlisted the pride of States ; as to have exasperated and 
agitated a large line of border ; as to have entered 
finally into the tactics of political parties, and the 
schemes of ambitious men, out-bidding, out-racing one 
another in a competition of clamor and vehemence ; a 
controversy on which England, a European monarchy, 
a first class power, near to the great sources of the 
opinion of the world, by her press, her diplomacy, and 
her universal intercourse had taken great pains to per- 
suade Europe that our claim was groundless and uncon- 
scientious — all these things announced to near observers 
in public life a crisis at hand which demanded some- 
thing more than - any sensible and honest man" to en- 
counter ; assuring some glory to him who should tri- 
umph over it. One such observer said: "Men stood 
facing each other with gims on their shoulders, upon op- 
posite sides of fordable rivers, thirty yards wide. The 
discharge of a single musket would have brought on a 
war whose fires would have encircled the globe." 

Is this act disparaged next because what each party 
had for sixty years claimed as the true line of the old 
treaty was waived, a line of agreement substituted, and 
equivalents given and taken, for gain or loss ? But here- 

5 



50 

in you will .see only, ^vllat the nation lias seen, the bold- 
ness as ^vell as sagacity of Mr. Webster. When the 
awaiil of the king of the Netherlands, propo.sing a line 
of agreement, was oflered to Pre.'sident Jackson, that 
strong will darc(l not accept it in face of the party poli- 
tics of Maine — although he advised to ofier her the 
value of a million of dollars to procure her a.s.sent to an 
adjustment which his own mind approved. What he 
dared not do, inferred some peril 1 suppose. Yet the 
experience of twentj' years; of sixty years; should have 
taught all men ; had taught many who shrank from act- 
ing on it, that the Gordian knot must be cut, not un- 
loosed — that all further attempt to find the true line 
must be abandoned as an idle and a perilous diplomacy ; 
and that a b(jundary must be made by a bargain worthy 
of nations, or must be traced b}' the point of the bayonet. 
The merit of Mr. Webster is lirst that he dared to open 
the negotiation on this basis. I sav the boldness. For 
appreciate the domestic dilliculties which attended it. 
In its nature it proposed to give up something which 
we had thought our own for half a century ; to cede of 
the territory of more than one State ; it demanded there- 
fore the assent of those States by formal act, committing 
the State jjarties in power une(juivocally ; it was to be 
undertaken not in the administration of Monroe — elect- 
ed by the whole people — not in the administration of 
Jackson whose vast popularity could carry any thing, 
and withstand any tiling; but just when the dcatli of 
President llanison had scattered his party; had alien- 
ated hearts; had severed ties and dissolved connections 
indispensable to the strength of administration ; creat- 
ing a loud call on Mr. Webster to leave the Cabinet — 
creating almost the appearance of an unwillingness that 
he should contribute to its glory even by largest service 
to the State. 



51 

Yet consider finally how he surmounted every diffi- 
culty. I will not say with Lord Palmerston, in parlia- 
ment, that there was " nobody in England who did not 
admit it a very bad treaty for England." But I may re- 
peat what I said on it in the Senate in 1843. "And 
now what does the world see ? An adjustment con- 
cluded by a special minister at Washington, by which 
four fifths of the value of the whole subject in contro- 
versy, is left to you as your own ; and by which, for that 
one fifth which England desires to possess, she pays you 
over and over, in national equivalents, imperial equiva- 
lents, such as a nation may give, such as a nation may 
accept, satisfactory to your interests, soothing to your 
honor — the navisration of the St. John — a concession 
the value of which nobody disputes, a concession not to 
Maine alone, but to the Avhole country, to commerce, to 
navigation, as far as winds blow or waters roll — an 
equivalent of inappreciable' value, opening an ample path 
to the sea, an equivalent in part for what she receives 
of the territory in dispute — a hundred thousand acres 
in New Hampshire ; fifty thousand acres in Vermont 
and New York ; the point of land commanding the great 
militar}^ way to and from Canada by Lake Champlain ; 
the fair and fertile island of St. George ; the surrender 
of a pertinacious pretension to four millions of acres 
westward of Lake Superior. Sir, I will not say that this 
adjustment admits, or was designed to admit that our 
title to the whole territory in controversy was perfect 
and indisputable. I will not do so much injustice to the 
accomplished and excellent person who represented the 
moderation and the good sense of the English govern- 
ment and people in this negotiation. I cannot adopt 
even for the defence of a treaty which I so much ap- 
prove, the language of a writer in the London Morn- 



r 



2 



ing Chronicle of Scpteniljcr last, avIio Im.s been said to 
be Lord Palincrston, ^vllic•ll over and over asserts — 
gubstantiall^' as his Lordship certainly did in parliament, 
that the adjustment 'virtually acknowledges the Ameri- 
can claim to the Avhole of the disputed territory,' and 
that ^ it gives England no share at all ; absolutely none ; 
i\)v the capitulation virtually and practically yields up 
the whole territory to the United States, and then 
brings back a small part of it in exchange for the right 
of navigating the St. John.' 1 will not say this. But I 
say first, that by concession of everybody it is a better 
treaty than the administration of President Jackson 
would have most eagerly concluded, if by the offer of a 
million and a quarter acres (jf land they could have pro- 
cured the assent of Maine to it. That treaty she re- 
jected ; this she accepts ; and 1 disparage nobody when 
I maintain that on all parts, and all aspects, of this ques- 
tion, national or state, military or industrial, her opinion 
is worth that of the whole country beside. I i<!\y next 
that the treaty admits the substantial justice of your 
general claim. It admits that in its utmost extent it 
was plausible, formidable, and made in pure good faith. 
It admits before the nations that we have not been rapa- 
cious; have not made false clamor; that we have assert- 
ed our own, and oldained our own. Adjudging to you 
the possession of four fifths indisputal)ly, .she gives you 
for the one fifth which you concede, eiiuivalents, given 
as erjm'rahi/.f, co nomine, on purpose to soothe and save 
the point of honor; whose intrinsical and comparative 
vahu' is such that you may accept them as eciuivalents 
without reproach to your judgment, or your liniine.^s, or 
your good faith ; w ho.se intrinsical and comparative 
value, tried \)\ the maxims, weighed in the scales of im- 
perial traffic, make them a compensation over and over 
again lor all wc concede." 



53 

But I linger too long upon his public life, and upon 
this one of its great acts. With Avhat profound convic- 
tion of all the difficulties which beset it; with what 
anxieties for the issue, hope and fear alternately prepon- 
derating, he entered on that extreme trial of capacity, 
and good fortune, and carried it through, I shall not 
soon forget. As if it were last night, I recall the time 
when, after the Senate had ratified it in an evening 
executive session, by a vote of thirty-nine to nine, I 
personally carried to him the result, at his own house, 
and in presence of his wife. Then, indeed, the measure 
of his glory and happiness seemed full. In the exube- 
rant language of Burke, " I stood near him, and his face, 
to use the expression of the Scripture of the first mar- 
t^^r, was as if it had been the face of an angel. ' Hope 
elevated, and joy brightened his crest.' I do not know 
how others feel, but if I had stood in that situation, I 
would not have exchanged it for all that kings or people 
could bestow." 

Such eminence and such hold on the public mind as 
he attained demands extraordinary general intellectual 
power, adequate mental culture, an impressive, attract- 
ive, energetic and great character, and extraordinary 
specific power also of influencing the convictions and 
actions of others by speech. These all he had. 

That in the quality of pure and sheer power of intel- 
lect he was of the first class of men, is, I think, the uni- 
versal judgment of all who have personally witnessed 
many of his higher displays, and of all who without that 
opportunity have studied his life in its actions and in- 
fluences, and studied his mind in its recorded thoughts. 
Sometimes it has seemed to me that to enable one to 
appreciate with accuracy, as a psychological speculation, 
the intrinsic and absolute volume and texture of that 



51 

brain; the real rate and measure of those aljilities; it 
•was better not to see or hear him, unless vou could .see 
or liear liim iVcMjueutly, and in various modes of exld- 
bition ; lor undoulUedly there was something in his 
countenance and bearing so expressive of command ; 
something even in his conversational language when 
sa}'ing parm summisse d moiUca Icnipcratc, so exquisitely 
plausible, embodying the likeness at least of a rich truth, 
the forms at least of a large generalization, in an epithet; 
an antithesis; a pointed phrase; abroad and peremp- 
tory thesis — and something in his grander forth-put- 
ting when rjused by a great subject or occasion exciting 
his reason and touching his moral sentiments and his 
heart, so dilFicult to be resisted, approaching so near, 
going so far beyond, the higher style of man, that 
although it left you a very good witness of his power of 
intluencing others, you were not in the best condition, 
innnediately, to pronounce on the quality, or tlie source 
oftlie influence. You saw the Hash and heard the peal; 
and felt the admiration and fear; but from what retriou 
it was launched, and bv wliat divinitv, and from what 
Olympian seat, you could not certainly yet tell. To do 
that, you must, if you saw him at all, see him many 
times; compare hiiu with himsell', and with others; 
follow his dazzling career f. om his i'ather's house; 
observe from what conq)etitors he won tho-^^e laurels; 
study his discour.ses, study them by the side of those of 
other great men of this country and tiinc. and of otiicr 
countries and times, conspicuous in the same iiclds of 
mental achievement ; look throui-h the crvstal water of 
the st}le down to the golden sands of the thought; 
analyze and eontiast intellectual })ower .»<omewhat ; con- 
sider what kind, and what (piantity of it has been held 
by students of mind nccdfid in order to great eminence 



55 

in the higher mathematicSj or metaphysics, or reason of 
the law : what capacity to analyze, through and through, 
to the primordial elements of the truths of that science ; 
yet what wisdom and sobriety, in order to control' the 
wantonness and shun the absurdities of a mere scholastic 
logic, by systematizing ideas, and combining them, and 
repressing one by another, thus producing, not a collec- 
tion of intense and conflicting paradoxes, but a code — 
scientifically coherent, and practicallj^ useful, — consider 
what description and what quantity of mind have been 
held needful by students of mind in order to conspicu- 
ous eminence, long maintained, in statesmanship ; that 
great practical science, that great philosopliical art — 
whose ends are the existence, happiness and honor of a 
nation : whose truths are to be drawn from the widest 
survey of man ; of social man : of the particular race, 
and particular community for which a government is to 
be made, or kept, or a policy to be provided ; " philoso- 
phy in action," demanding at once, or affording place 
for, the highest speculative genius, and the most skilful 
conduct of men, and of affairs; and, finally, consider 
what degree and kind of mental power has been found 
to be required in order to influence the reason of an 
audience and a nation by speech — not magnetizing the 
mere nervous or emotional nature by an effort of that 
nature — but operating on reason by reason — a great 
reputation in forensic and deliberative eloquence, main- 
tained and advancing for a lifetime — it is thus that we 
come to be sure that his intellectual power was as real 
and as uniform, as its very happiest particular display 
had been imposing and remarkable. 

It was not quite so easy to analyze that power, to 
compare or contrast it with that of other mental celebri- 
ties, and show how it differed or resembled, as it was to 
discern its existence. 



OG 

AVliotlier, for cxainplc, lie M^ould liave excellecl as 
niiicli in ntluT lields of exertion — in speculative philo- 
sojiliy, for example, in any oi' its departments — is a 
l)ro))lem impussible to determine and needless to move. 
To me it seems quite clear that the whole wealth of his 
powers, his whole emotional nature, his eloquent feeling, 
his matchless capacity to aflect others' conduct by affect- 
ing their practical judgments, could not have been 
known, could not have Ijeen poured forth in a stream so 
rich and stronix and full, could not have so reacted on, 
and ai(l('(l and winged the mighty intelligence, in any 
other walk of mind, or life, than that he chose — that in 
any other there must have been some disjoining of 
qualities which God had united — some divorce of pure 
intellect from the helps or hindrances or companionship 
of common sense and beautiful genius ; and that in any 
field of speculative ideas but half of him, or part of him, 
could have found its sphere. AVIiat that part might 
have been or done, it is vain to incjuire. 

I have been told that the assertion has been hazarded 
that he " was great in understanding; deficient in the 
large reason ; " and to prove this distinction he is com- 
pare(l disadvantageously, with "Socrates; Aristotle; 
Plato ; Leil)nitz ; Newton ; and Descartes." If this 
means tiiat he did not devote his mind, such as it was, 
to their speculations, it is true; but that would not 
prove tiial he had not as much "higher reason." Where 
was liacon's hljlicr reason when he was composing his 
readiuLT on the Statute of Uses? Had he lost it? or 
was he only not employing it ? or was he employing it 
on an inv('sti<j;ation of law ? If it means that he l)ad not 
as inucii absolute intellectual power as they, or could 
not, in their departments, have done what they did, it 
may be dismis-cd ;is a dogma incapable of proof, and 



57 

incapable o'' refutation; ineffectual as a disparagement; 
nnpliilosophical as a comparison. 

It is too common with those who come from the reve- 
ries of a cloistered speculation, to judge a practical life ; 
to say of him, and such as he, that they " do not enlarge 
universal law, and first principles; and philosophical 
ideas ; " that " they add no new maxim formed by induc- 
tion out of human history and old thought." In this 
there is some truth; and yet it totally fails to prove 
that they do not possess all the intellectual power, and 
all the specific form of intellectual power required for 
such a description of achievement ; and it totally fails, 
too, to prove that they do not use it quite as truly to 
" the glory of God, and the bettering of man's estate." 
Whether they ossess such power or not, the evidence 
does not disprove ; and it is a pedantic dogmatism, if it 
is not a malignant dogmatism, which, from such evidence, 
pronounces that they do not ; but it is doubtless so, that 
by an original bias ; by accidental circumstances or deli- 
berate choice, he determined early to devote himself to 
a practical and great duty, and that was to uphold a 
recent, delicate, and complex political system, which his 
studies, his sagacity, taught him, as Solon learned, was 
the best the people could bear ; to uphold it ; to adapt 
its essential principles and its actual organism to the 
great changes of his time ; the enlarging territory ; en- 
larging numbers ; sharper antagonisms ; mightier pas- 
sions ; a new nationality ; and under it, and by means 
of it, and by a steady government, a wise policy of busi- 
ness, a temperate conduct of foreign relations, to enable 
a people to develop their resources, and fulfil their 
mission. This he selected as his work on earth; this 
his task ; this, if well done, his consolation, his joy, his 



o8 

triuinpli ! Tn tills, call it, in comparison with the medi- 
tations of philosophy, humhle or high, he hrought all 
the vast gifts of intellect, whatever they were, where- 
with God had enriched him. And now, do they infer 
that, hecause he selected such a work to do he could not 
have possessed the higher form of intellectual power; 
or do they sav that, hecause having selected it, he per- 
formed it with a masterly and uniform sagacity, and 
prudence, and good sense ; using ever the appropriate 
means to tli o selected end ; that therefore he could not 
have possessed the higher form of intellectual power ? 
Because all his life long, he recognized that his voca- 
tion was that of a statesman and a jurist, not that of a 
thinker and dreamer in the shade, still less of a general 
agitator ; that his duties connected themselves mainly 
with an existing stupendous political order of things, to 
be kept — to he adapted with all possible civil discre- 
tion and temper to the growth of the nation — hut by 
no means to be exchanged for any quantity of amor- 
phous matter in the form of " universal law " or new 
maxims and fi^reat ideas born since the last chauLre of 
the moon — Ijecause he quite habitually spoke the lan- 
guage of the Constitution and the law, not the phrase- 
ology of a new philosophy; confining himself very much 
to inculcating historical, traditional, and indispensable 
maxims — neutrality ; justice; good faith; observance of 
fundamental compacts of Union and the like — because 
it was America — our America — he sought to preserve, 
and to set forward to her glory — not so much an ab- 
stract conception of humanity; because he could com- 
bine many ideas; many elements; many antagonisms; 
in a harmonious, and noble practical politics, instead of 
fastening on one onlv, and — that sure siirn of small or 



59 

perverted ability — aggravating it to disease and false- 
hood — is it therefore inferred that he had not the 
larger form of intellectual power? 

And this power was not oppressed, but aided and 
accomplished by exercise the most constant, the most 
severe, the most stimulant, and by a force of will as 
remarkable as his genius, and by adequate mental and 
tasteful culture. How much the eminent greatness it 
reached is due to the various and lofty competition to 
which he brought, if he could, the most careful prepara- 
tion — competition with adversaries cum qidhiis ceriare erat 
gloriosiiiSy qiiam omnino adversarios non habere, cum iwcGseriim 
non modo, minqiiam sit aut illorwn ah ipso cursus impeditiis, aid 
ah ipsis suns, sed contra semper alter ah altero adjutus, et com- 
municando, et moiiendo, etfavendo, you may well appreciate. 

I claim much, too, under the name of mere mental 
culture. Remark his style. I allow its full weight to 
the Horatian maxim, scrihendi rede sapcre est et principium 
et foils, and I admit that he had deep and exquisite 
judgment, largely of the gift of God. But such a style 
as his is due also to art, to practice — in the matter of 
style, incessant, to great examples of fine writing turned 
by the nightly and the daily hand; to Cicero, through 
whose pellucid deep seas the pearl shows distinct, and 
large and near, as if within the arm's reach ; to Virgil, 
whose magic of words, whose exquisite structure and 
"rich economy of expression," no other writer ever equal- 
led ; to our English Bible, and especially to the propheti- 
cal writings, and of these especially to Ezekiel — of some 
of whose peculiarities, and among- them that of the repe- 
tition of single words, or phrases for emphasis and im- 
pression, a friend has called my attention to some very 
striking illustrations; to Shakespeare, of the stjde of 
whose comic dialogue we may, in the language of the 



CO 

great critic, assert '- that it is that which in the Eny:Hsh 
nation is never to heconie obsolete, a certain mode of 
I)hraseology so consonant and congenial to analogy, to 
principles of the language, as to remain settled and un- 
altered — a style above grossness, below modish and pe- 
dantic forms of speech, -where propriety resides;" to 
Addison, whom Johnson, Mackintosh, and Macaulay, 
concur to put at the head of all fine writers, for the 
amenity, delicacy, and unostentatious elegance of his 
English; to Popi-, polished, condensed, sententious; to 
Johnson and lUuke, in whom all the atlluence and all 
the energy of our tongue in both its great elements of 
Saxon and Latin might be exemplified ; to the study 
and comparison, but not the copying of authors such as 
these ; to habits of writing, and speaking, and convers- 
ing, on the capital theory of always doing his best — 
thus somewhat, I think, was acquired that remarkable 
production, '• the last work of combined study and 
genius," his rich, clear, correct, harmonious, and weighty 
style of prose. 

Beyond these studies and exercises of taste, he had 
read variously and judiciously. If any public man, or 
any man, had more thoroughly mastered British con- 
stitutional and f!:eneral historv, or the historv of British 
legislation, or could deduce the progress, era.**, eau.ses, 
and hindrances of British liberty in more prompt, exact, 
and coijious detail, or had in \\\< mcniorv, at anv frivon 
moment, a more ample ])olitical biography, or political 
literature, 1 do not know him. His library of English 
history, and of all history, was always rich, .^eleet, and 
(•atholii', and I well recollect hearin;:; him. in 1S1!>. ^vllile 
attending a eouniiencement of this college, at an even- 
ing jiarty sketch, with great emphasis and interest of 
manner, the merits of CJeorge Buchanan, the historian of 



61 

Scotland — liis latinity and eloqnence almost eqnal to 
Livy's, his love of liberty and liis genius greater, and his 
title to credit not much worse. American history and 
American political literature he had by heart. The long 
series of influences that trained us for representative 
and free government ; that other series of influences 
"which moulded us into a united government — the colo- 
nial era — the age of controversy before the revolution; 
every scene and every person in that great tragic 
action — the asre of controversv followino; the revolu- 

O •/ CD 

tion, and preceding the Constitution, unlike the earlier, 
in which we divided among ourselves on the greatest 
questions which can engage the mind of America — the 
questions of the existence of a national government, of 
the continued existence of the State governments, on 
the i^artition of powers, on the umpirage of disputes be- 
tween them — a controversy on which the destiny of 
the New World was staked ; every problem, which has 
successively engaged our politics, and every name which 
has figured in them, the whole stream of our time was 
open, clear, and present ever to his eye. 

I think, too, that, though not a frequent and ambi- 
tious citer of authorities, he had read, in the course of 
the stud}^ of his profession or politics, and had meditated 
all the great writers and thinkers by whom the princi- 
ples of republican government, and all free govern- 
ments, are most authoritatively expounded. Aristotle, 
Cicero, Machiavel, one of whose discourses on Livy, 
maintains in so masterly an argument, how much wiser 
and more constant are the people than the prince — a 
doctrine of liberty consolatory and full of joy, Harring- 
ton, Milton, Sidney, Locke, I know he had read and 
weighed. 

Other classes of information there were, partly ob- 

6 



02 

tainod from books, partly Irom observation — to .some 
extent referable to his two main employments of poli- 
tics and law — by whidi he was distinguished remarkably. 
Thus, nobody l)iit was struck ^vith his knowled<re of 
civil and physical geography, and to a less extent of 
creolofv and races ; of all the great routes and marts of 
our foreign, coastwise, and interior connnerce ; the sub- 
jects wliich it exchanges, the whole circle of industry it 
comprehends and passes around ; the kinds of our me- 
chanical and manufacturing productions, and their re- 
lations to all labor, and life ; the history, theories, and 
practice of agriculture, our own and that of other coun- 
tries, and its relations to government, liberty, happiness, 
and the character of nations. This kind of information 
enriched and assisted all his public efiorts ; but to appre- 
ciate the variety and accuracy of his knowledge, and 
even the true couipa.'^s of his mind, you must have had 
some familiarity with his friendly written correspon- 
dence, and you must have conversed with him, with 
some degree of freedom. There, more than in senato- 
rial or forensic debate, gleamed the true riches of his 
genius, as well as the goodness of his large heart, and 
the kindness of his noble nature. There, with no longer 
a great part to discharge, no longer compelled to weigh 
and measure propositions, to tread the dizzy heights 
w hich part the antagonisms of the Constitution, to put 
aside allusions and illustrations, which crowded on his 
mind in action, but which the dignity of a public apjjcar- 
ance had to reject — in the conlidence of hospitality, 
■which ever he dispensed as a prince ^vho also was a 
friend — liis memory, one of his most extraordinary 
faculties, (piite in proportion to all the rest, swept free 
over the readings and labors of more than half a century; 
and then allusion.s, direct and ready quotations, a passing. 



G 



o 



mature criticism, sometimes only a recollection of the 
mere emotions wliich a glorious passage or interesting 
event had once excited, darkening for a moment the 
face, and filling the eye — often an instructive exposi- 
tion of a current maxim of philosophy or politics, the 
history of an invention, the recital of some incident 
casting a new light on some transaction or some institu- 
tion — this flow of unstudied conversation, quite as 
remarkable as any other exhibition of his mind, better 
than any other, perhaps, at once opened an unexpected 
glimpse of his various acquirements, and gave you to 
experience delightedly that the " mild sentiments have 
their eloquence as well as the stormy passions." 

There must be added next the element of an impres- 
sive character, inspiring regard, trust, and admiration, 
not unmingled with love. It had, I think, intrinsically 
a charm such as belongs only to a good, noble, and 
beautiful nature. In its combination Avith so much 
fame, so much force of will, and so much intellect, it 
filled and fascinated the imasrination and heart. It was 
aifectionate in childhood and youth, and it was more 
than ever so m the few last months of his long life. It 
is the universal testimony that he gave to his parents, 
in largest measure, honor, love, obedience ; that he 
eagerly appropriated the first means wdiich he could 
command to relieve the father from the debts contracted 
to educate his brother and himself — that he selected 
his first place of professional practice that he might 
soothe the coming on of his old age — that all through 
life he neglected no occasion, sometimes when leaning 
on the arm of a friend, alone, with faltering voice, some- 
times in the presence of great assemblies, where the tide 
of general emotion made it graceful, to expresss his 
" affectionate veneration of him who reared and defend- 



G4 

ed the luji cabin in ^vllioll liis eliler brotlicrs and sLsters 
"were born, a<4;iinst savage violence ami destruction ; 
cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and 
through the lire and blood of some years of revolution- 
ary ^var, shrank from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to 
serve his countrv, and to raise his children to a condition 
better than his own." 

K(iually beautiful was his love of all his kindred, and 
of all his friends, Wiien I hear him accused of selfish- 
ness, and a cold, bad nature, I recall him lying sleepless 
all night, not without tears of boyhood, conferring with 
Ezekiel how the darling desire of both hearts should be 
compa.ssed, and he too admitted to the precious privi- 
leges of education ; courageously pleading the cause of 
both brothers in the morning; prevailing by the wise 
and discerning aflection of the mother; suspending his 
studies of the law, and registering deeds and teaching 
school to earn the means, fur l)oth, of availing them- 
selves of the opportunit} which the parental self-sacrifice 
had placed within their reach — loving him through 
life, mourning him when dead, -with a love and a sorrow 
very wonderful — passing the, sorrow of woman ; I re- 
call the husband, the father of the living and of the 
early departed, the friend, the counsellor of many yeai*s, 
and my heart grows too i"ull and li(iuid for the refuta- 
tiiiii of words. 

J lis allectionate nature, craving ever friendship, as 
■well as the presence of kindred blood, diffused itself 
through all his private life, gave sincerity to all his hos- 
pitalities, kindne.^^s to his v\i\ warmth to the pressure of 
his jiand ; made his greatness and genius unbend them- 
selves to the playfulness of childhood, liowt'd out in 
graceful memories indulged of the past or the dead, of 
incidents when life was young and promised to be happy 



65 

— gave generous sketches of his rivals — the high con- 
tention now hidden by the handful of earth — recalled 
hours passed fifty 3^ears ago with great authors, recalled 
them for the vernal emotions which then they made to 
live and revel in the sonl. And from these conversa- 
tions of friendship, no man — no man, old or young — 
went away to remember one word of profaneness, one 
allusion of indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbe- 
lieving suggestion, one doubt cast on the reality of 
virtue, of patriotism, of enthusiasm, of the progress of 
man — one doubt cast on righteousness, or temperance, 
or judgment to come. 

Every one of his tastes and recreations announced 
the same type of character. His love of agriculture, of 
sports in the open air, of the outward world in starlight 
and storms, and sea and boundless wilderness — partly a 
result of the influences of the first fourteen years of his 
life, perpetuated like its other affections and its other 
lessons of a mother's love, the psalms, the Bible, the 
stories of the wars — partly the return of an unsophisti- 
cated and healthful nature, tiring, for a space, of the idle 
business of political life, its distinctions, its artificialities, 
to employments, to sensations which interest without 
agitating the universal race alike, as God has framed it ; 
in which one feels himself only a man, fashioned from 
the earth, set to till it, appointed to return to it, yet 
made in the image of his Maker, and with a spirit that 
shall not die — all displayed one whom the most various 
intercourse with the world, the longest career of strife 
and honors, the consciousness of intellectual sujDremacy, 
the coming in of a wide fame, constantly enlarging, left 
as he was at first, natural, simple, manly, genial, kind. 

You will all concur, I think, with a learned friend who 
thus calls my attention to the resemblance of his char- 

6* 



66 

actor, iu .some ui' llicsc p;uticiiha-s, to that of Walter 
Scott. 

'• Nature endowed Ijoth willi athletic frames, and a 
noble presence ; both passionately loved rural life, its 
labors, and sports; possessed a manly simplicity free 
from all affectation, genial and social tastes, full minds, 
and lia[>py elocution ; both stamped themselves uith 
indelible marks npon the age in ^\hich they lived ; both 
were laborious and always with high and virtuous aims, 
ardent in patriotism, overflowing with love of ' kindred 
blood,' and, above all, frank and unostentatious Chris- 
tians." 

1 have learned by evidence the most direct and satis- 
factory, that in the last months of his life, the whole 
aflectionateness of his nature; his consideration of 
others ; his gentleness ; his desire to make them happy 
and to see them happy, seemed to come out in more and 
more beautiful and liabitual expression than ever before. 
The long day's public tasks were felt to be done ; the 
cares, the uncertainties, the mental conllicts of high 
place, were ended ; and he came home to recover him- 
self for the few years which he might still expect would 
be his before he should go hence to be here no more. 
And there, I am assured and fully believe, no unbecom- 
ing regrets pursued him; no discontent, as for injustice 
suflered or expectations unfulfilled ; no self-reproach for 
any thing done or any thing omitted by himself; no 
irritation, nn ]>oevishness unworthy of his noble nature ; 
but instead, love and hope for his country, when she 
became the subject of conversation ; and for all around 
him, the dearest and the most indifferent, for all breath- 
ing things about him, the overflow of the kindest heart 
growing in gentleness and benevolence; paternal, patn- 
urchcal affections, seeming to become more natural, 



G7 

warm, and commnnicative every lioiir. Softer and yet 
brighter grew the tints on the sky of parting day ; and 
the last lingering rays, more even than the glories of 
noon, announced how divine was the source from which 
they proceeded ; how incapable to be quenched ; how 
certain to rise on a morning which no night should follow. 
Such a character was made to be loved. It was loved. 
Those who knew and saw it in its hour of calm — those 
who could repose on that soft green, loved him. His 
plain neighbors loved him ; and one said, when he was 
laid in his grave, " How lonesome the world seems ! " 
Educated young men loved him. The ministers of the 
gospel, the general intelligence of the country, the 
masses afar off, loved him. True, they had not found in 
his speeches, read by millions, so much adulation of the 
people ; so much of the music which robs the public 
reason of itself; so many phrases of humanity and phi- 
lanthropy ; and some had told them he was lofty and 
cold — solitary in his greatness ; but every year they 
came nearer and nearer to him, and as they (fame nearer 
they loved him better ; they heard how tender the son 
had been, the husband, the brother, the father, the 
friend, and neighbor ; that he w^as plain, simple, natural, 
generous, hospitable — the heart larger than the brain ; 
that he loved little children and reverenced God, the 
Scriptures, the Sabbath day, the Constitution, and the 
law — and their hearts clave unto him. More truly of 
him than even of the great naval darling of England 
might it be said, that " his presence would set the church 
bells ringing, and give school-boys a holiday — would 
bring children from school and old men from the chim- 
ney corner, to gaze on him ere he died." The great and 
•unavailing lamentation first revealed the deep place he 
had in the hearts of his countrymen. 



G8 

Yoii are now to adtl to this his cxtraonlinary power 
of inlliiencing the convictions' of others by speech, and 
you have comi)leted the suivey of the means of his 
^^reatness. And here a^ain I begin by admiring an 
aggregate, made up of excellences and triumphs, ordi- 
narily deemed incompatible. lie spoke^with consum- 
mate al)ility to the bench, and yet exactly as, according 
to every sound canon of ta^te and ethics, the bench 
ouirht to Ijc addressed. He spoke ^vith consmnmate 
ability to the jury, and yet exactly as, according to every 
sound canon, that totally difierent tribunal ought to be 
addressed. In the halls of Congress, before the people 
assembled for political discussion in masses, before audi- 
ences smaller and more select, assemljled for some so- 
lemn connnemoration of the past, or of the dead ; in 
each of these, again, his speech, of the first form of 
ability, was exactly adapted also to the critical proprie- 
ties of the i)lace ; each achieved, -svhen delivered, the 
most instant and specific success of eloquence, some of 
them in a splendid and remarkable degree, and yet 
stranger still, Avhen reduced to writing as they fell from 
his lips, they compose a body of reading, in many vol- 
nmes, solid, clear, rich, and full of harmony, a classical 
and permanent political literature. 

And yet all these modes of his eloquence, exactly 
adapted eacli to its stage and its end, were stamped with 
his image and superscription ; identified by characteris- 
tics incapable to be counterfeited, and impos.sible to be 
mistaken. The same high power of reason, intent in 
every one to explore and display some truth ; some 
truth of judicial, or historical, or biographical fact; some 
truth of law, deduced by construction, perhajis, or by 
illation; some truth of policy, for want whereof a 
nation, generations, may be the worse ; reason seeking 



69 

and unfolding truth ; the same tone in all of deep ear- 
nestness, expressive of strong desire that that which he 
felt to be important should be accepted as true, and 
spring up to action ; the same transparent, plain, for- 
cible and direct speech, conveying his exact thought to 
the mind, not something less or more ; the same sov- 
ereignty of form, of brow, and eye, and tone, and man- 
ner — everywhere the intellectual king of men, stand- 
ing before you — that same marvellousness of qualities 
and results, residing, I know not where, in words, in pic- 
tures, in the ordering of ideas, in felicities indescribable, 
by means whereof, coming from his tongue, all things 
seemed mended ; truth seemed more true ; probability 
more plausible ; greatness more grand ; goodness more 
awful ; every affection more tender than when coming 
from other tongues, — these are in all his eloquence. 
But sometimes it became individualized, and discrimi- 
nated even from itself; sometimes place and circum- 
stances, great interests at stake, a stage, an audience 
fitted for the highest historic action, a crisis, personal or 
national, upon him, stirred the depths of that emotional 
nature as the anger of the goddess stirs the sea on which 
the great epic is beginning ; strong passions, themselves 
kindled to intensity, quickened every faculty to a new 
life ; the stimulated associations of ideas brought all 
treasures of thought and knowledge within command ; 
the spell, which often held his imagination fast, dissolved, 
and she arose and gave him to choose of her urn of gold ; 
earnestness became vehemence, the simple, perspicuous, 
measured and direct lano;ua2;e became a headlons;, full 
and burning tide of speech ; the discourse of reason, 
wisdom, gravity, and beauty, changed to that J&tvou^g, 
that rarest consummate eloquence, grand, rapid, pa- 
thetic, terrible ; the cdiqidd immensum .infinitumque that 



70 

Cicero iniglit liave recognized ; the ma.ster triumpli of 
man in the happiest opportunity of his noblest power. 

Siicli ( levation above himself, in congressional debate, 
was most uncommon. .**^omc such there were in the 
great discu.^sions of executive power following the re- 
moval of the deposits, which they who heard them will 
never forget, and some which re.st in the tradition of 
hearers only. But there were other fields of oratory on 
"which, under the inlluence of more uncommon springs 
of insjuration, he exemplified, in still other forms, an 
elo(|uence in which I do not know that he has had a, 
superior among men. Addressing masses by tens of 
thousands in the open air, on the urgent political ques- 
tions of the da}'; or designated to lead the meditations 
of an hour devoted to the remembrance of some national 
era, or of some incident marking the progress of the na- 
tion, and lifting him up to a view of what is and what is 
past, and some indistinct revelation of the glory that 
lies in the future, or of some great historical name, just 
borne ]jy the nation to his tomb — we have learned that 
then and there, at the base of Bunker Ilill, before the 
corner-stone was laid, and again when from the finished 
column the centuries looked on him ; in Fauueil Hall, 
mourning for those with whose spoken or written elo- 
quence of freedom its arches had so often resounded ; ou 
the rock of Plj'niou'h ; before the capitol, of which there 
^hall not be one stone left on another, before his memory 
shall have ceased to live — In such scenes, mifettered by 
the laws of forensic or parliamentary debate, multitudes 
uncounted lifting up their cyi}f^ to him ; some groat his- 
torical scenes of America around — all syml)()ls of her 
glory, : nd art, and power, and fortune, there — voices 
of the past, not unheard — shapes beckoning from the 
future, not unseen — sometimes that mighty intellect, 



71 

borne upwards to a heiglit and kindled to an illumina- 
tion which we shall see no more, wrought out, as it 
were, in an instant, a picture of vision, warning, predic- 
tion ; the jji'ogi'ess of the nation ; the contrasts of its 
eras ; the heroic deaths ; the motives to patriotism ; the 
maxims and arts imperial by which the glory has been 
gathered and may be heightened — wrought out, in an 
mstant, a picture to fade only when all record of our 
mind shall die. 

In looking over the public remains of his oratory, it is 
striking to remark how, even in that most sober, and 
massive understanding and nature, you see gathered and 
expressed the characteristic sentiments and the passing 
time of our America. It is the strong old oak, which 
ascends before you ; yet our soil, our heaven, are attest- 
ed in it, as perfectly as if it were a flower that could 
grow in no other climate, in no other hour of the year 
or day. Let me instance in one thing only. It is a 
peculiarity of some schools of eloquence, that they em- 
body and utter, not merely the individual genius and 
character of the speaker, but a national consciousness ; 
a national era ; a mood ; a hope ; a dread ; a despair, in 
which you listen to the spoken history of the time. 
There is an eloquence of an expiring nation; such as 
seems to sadden the glorious speech of Demosthenes ; 
such as breathes grand and gloomy from the visions of 
the prophets of the last days of Israel and Judah ; such 
as gave a spell to the expression of Grattan, and of Kos- 
suth — the sweetest, most mournful, most awful of the 
words which man may utter, or which man may hear, 
the eloquence of a perishing nation. There is another 
eloquence, in which the national consciousness of a 
young, or renewed and vast strength ; of trust in a daz- 
zling, certain, and limitless future ; an inward glorying 



72 



in victories yet to be won, sounds out as by voice of 
clarion, cliallcngin;^ to contest for the highest prize of 
earth — such as that in wliich the leader of Israel in its 
lirst days holds up to the new nation the land of Prom- 
ise ; such as that which in the well imagined speeches 
scattered by Livy, over the history of the '• majestic 
series of victories," speaks the li(^man consciousness of 
growing aggrandizement wliich should subject the world; 
such as that, through which, at the tribunes of her revo- 
lution, in the bulletins of her rising Soldier, France told 
to tlie world her dream of glory. And of this kind, 
somewhat, is ours ; cheerful ; hopeful ; trusting, as befits 
youth and spring ; the eloquence of a State, beginning 
to ascend to the first class of power, eminence, and con- 
sideration ; and conscious of itself It is to no purpose 
that they tell you it is in bad taste ; that it partakes of 
arrogance and vanity ; that a true national goodbrecd- 
ing would not know, or seem to know, whether the nation 
is old or \'ounu:: whether the tides of her beini; are in 
their tlow or ebb ; whether these coursers of the sun arc 
sinking, slowly to rest, wearied with a journey of a thou- 
sand years, or just bounding from the Orient unbreathed. 
Higher laws than those of taste determine the conscious- 
ness of nations. Higher laws than those of taste deter- 
mine the general forms of the expression of that conscious- 
ness. Let the downward n<j:o of America find its ora- 
tors, and poets, and artists, to erect its spirit; or grace, 
and soothe its dying; be it ours to go up with Webster 
to the rock; the monument ; the capitol ; and bid '• the 
distant generations hail I" 

In this connection remark, somewhat more generally, 
to how extraordinary an extent he had, by his acts, 
words, thoughts, or the events of his life, associated him- 
self Ibrever, in the memory of all of us, with every his- 



^3 



torical incident, or at least Avith every historical epoch ; 
with every policy, with every glory, with every great 
name and fundamental institution, and grand or beauti- 
ful image, which are peculiarly and pro23erly American. 
Look backwards to the planting of Plymouth, and James- 
town ; to the various scenes of colonial life in peace and 
war ; to the opening, and march, and close of the revolu- 
tionary drama — to the age of the Constitution — to 
Washington, and Franklin, and Adams, and Jefferson — to 
the whole train of causes from the Reformation down- 
wards, which prepared us to be Republicans — to that 
other train of causes which led us to be Unionists ; look 
round on field, workshop, and deck, and hear the music 
of labor rewarded, fed and protected — look on the bright 
sisterhood of the States, each singing as a seraph in her 
motion, yet blending in a common beam and swelling a 
common harmony — and there is nothing which does not 
bring him by some tie to the memory of America. 

We seem to see his form and hear his deep grave 
speech everywhere. By some felicity of his personal 
life ; by some wise, deep, or beautiful word spoken or 
written ; by some service of his own, or some commem- 
oration of the services of others, it has come to pass that 
" our granite hills, our inland seas and prairies, and fresh, 
unbounded, magnificent wilderness ; " our encircling 
ocean ; the resting place of the Pilgrims ; our new-born 
sister of the Pacific ; our popular assemblies ; our free 
schools, all our cherished doctrines of education, and of 
the infiuence of religion, and material policy and law, 
and the Constitution, give us back his name. What 
American landscape will you look on — what subject of 
American interest will you study — what source of hope 
or of anxiety, as an American, will you acknowledge, 
that it does not recall him ? 



I have rcservctl, until I could treat it as a separate and 
fnial topic, the consideration of the morality oi" Mr. Web- 
ster's public character and life. To his true lame, to 
the kind and degree of influence which that large series 
of great actions, and those embodied thoughts of great 
intellect are to exert on the future — this is the all-im- 
portant consideration. In the last speech which he made 
in the Senate — the last of tho5e w hich he made, as he 
said, for the Con.stitution and the Union, and which he 
might have commended, as Bacon his name and mem- 
ory, " to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nation.^, 
and the next ages," yet Avith a better hope, he asserted 
— " The ends 1 aim at shall be those of my country, my 
God, and truth." Is that praise his? 

Until the seventh day of March, 1850, 1 think it would 
have* been accorded to him by an almost universal 
acclaim, — as general, and as expressive of profound and 
intelligent conviction, and of enthusiasm, love, and trust, 
as ever saluted conspicuous statesmanship, tried by many 
crises of afliiirs in a great nation, agitated ever by par- 
ties, and wholly free. 

That he had admitted into his heart a desire to win, 
by deserving them, the highest forms of jjublic honor, 
manv would have said : and thev who loved him most 
fondly, and felt the truest solicitude that he should carry 
a good conscience and pure fame brightening to the end, 
would not have feared to concede. For he was not 
iirnorant of himself, and he therefore knew that there 
was nothing within the l^nion. Constitution, and law, too 
hiuh. or too larw, or too dillicult for him. He Itelieved 
that his natural or his acipiired al)ilitie.s and his policy 
of administration, would contribute to the true glory of 
America; and he held no tlieory of ethics which requir- 
ed him to disparage, to suppress, to ignore vast capaci- 



75 

ties of public service merely because they were liis own. 
If the fleets of Greece were assembling, and her tribes 
buckling on their arms from Laconia to Mount Olympus, 
from the promontory of Sunium to the isle larthest to 
the west, and the great epic action was opening, it was 
not for him to feign insanity or idiocy, to escape the per- 
ils and the honor of command. But that all this in him 
had been eVer in subordination to a principled and beau- 
tiful public virtue ; that every sectional bias, every party 
tie, as well as every personal aspiring, had been uniform- 
ly held by him for nothing against the claims of coun- 
try ; that nothing lower than country seemed worthy 
enough — nothing smaller than country large enough — 
for that great heart, would not have been questioned by 
a whisper. Ah ! if at any hour before that day he had 
died, how would then the great procession of the peo- 
ple of America — the great triumphal procession of the 
dead — have moved onward to his grave — the sublim- 
ity of national sorrow, not contrasted, not outraged by 
one feeble voice of calumny ! 

In that antecedent public life, embracing from 1812 
to 1850 — a period of thirty-eight years — I find grand- 
est proofs of the genuineness and comprehensiveness of 
his patriotism, and the boldness and manliness of his 
jDublic virtue. He began his career of politics as a 
federalist. Such v/as his father — so beloved and rever- 
ed ; such his literary and professional companions ; such, 
although by no very decisive or certain preponderance, 
the community in which he was bred and was to live. 
Under that name of party he entered Congress, per- 
sonally, and by connection, opposed to the w\ar, which 
was thought to bear with such extreme sectional severity 
upon the North and East. And yet, one might almost 
say that the only thing he imbibed from federalists or 



TO 

federalism, ^vas love and jidiniration for tlie Constitution 
as the means of union. Tliat passion he did inherit 
from them ; tliat lie cherished. 

lie came into Con^^ress, opposed, as I have said, to 
the Avar; and hehold hiui, if you would judge of the 
quality of his political ethics, in opposition. Did those 
eloquent lip.s, at a time of life when vehemence and im- 
prudence are expected, if ever, and not ungraceful, let 
fall ever one word of faction? Did lie ever deny one 
power to the general government, which the soundest 
expositors of all creeds have allowed it ? Did he ever 
breathe a syllable which could excite a region, a State, 
a family of States, against the Union — which could hold 
out hope or aid to the enemy? — which sought or tend- 
ed to turn back or to chill the fiery tide of a new and 
intense nationality, then bursting np, to How and burn 
till all things appointed to America to do shall be ful- 
filled? These questions in their sukstance, he put to 
Mr. Calhoun, in 1838, in the Senate, and that great 
man — one of the authors of the war — just then, only 
then, in relations unfriendly to Mr. Webster, and who 
had just insinuated a reproach on his conduct in the 
war, was silent. Did ^h\ Webster content himself even 
witli objecting to the details of the mode in which the 
administration waged the war? No, indeed. Taught by 
his constitutional studies tliat the Union was made in 
part for commerce, familiar \\ith the habits of our long 
line of coast, knowing well how many sailors and fisher- 
men, driven from every sea by embargo and war, burned 
to go to the gun-deck and avenge the long wrongs of 
Enirland on the element where she had inllicted them, 
his opposition to Ihc war maniiested itself hy teaching 
the nation that the deck was her field of fame. X»n illi 
mjH'riiuH j)ciaf/i nacritm que IridcnUuiij scd nohisy sorle dulum. 



77 



But I might recall otlier evidence of the sterling and 
luiusnal qualities of his public virtue. Look in how 
manly a sort he, not merely conducted a particular argu- 
ment or a particular speech, but in how manly a sort, in 
how high a moral tone, he uniformly dealt with the 
mind of his country. Politicians got an advantage of 
him for this while he lived ; let the dead have just praise 
to-day. Our public life is one long electioneering, and 
even Burke tells you that at popular elections the most 
rigorous casuists will remit something of their severity. 
But where do you find him flattering his countrymen, 
indirectly or directly, for a vote ? On what did he ever 
place himself but good counsels and useful service ? His 
arts were manly arts, and he never saw a day of tempta- 
tion when he would not rather fall than stand on anv 
other. Who ever heard that voice cheering the people 
on to rapacity, to injustice, to a vain and guilty glory? 
Who ever saw that pencil of light hold up a picture of 
manifest destiny to dazzle the fancy ? How anxiously 
rather, in season and out, by the energetic eloquence of 
his youth, by his counsels bequeathed on the verge of a 
timely grave, he preferred to teach that by all possible 
acquired sobriety of mind, by asking reverently of the 
past, by obedience to the law, by habits of patient and 
legitimate labor, by the cultivation of the mind, by the 
fear and worship of God, we educate ourselves for the 
future that is revelling. Men said he did not sympa- 
thize with the masses, because his phraseology was 
rather of an old and simple school, rejecting the nauseous 
and vain repetitions of humanity and philanthropy, and 
progress and brotherhood, in which may lurk heresies so 
dreadful, of socialism or disunion ; in which a selfish, 
hollow, and shallow ambition may mask itself — the 
syren song which would lure the pilot from his course. 

7* 



78 

But I sav lliat lie d'ul svini^atliizc Avitli them ; and, be- 
cause he did, he came to thoni not Mith aduhition, but 
^vith truth; not ^vitll ^vord.s to please, but ^vith meas- 
ures to serve them ; not that his popuhir sympathies 
were less, but that his personal and intellectual dignity 
and his pu])lic morality -were greater. 

And on the seventh day of March, and down to the 
final scene, niight he not still say as ever before, that 
"all the ends he aimed at were his country's, his God's, 
uid truth's." lie declared, "I speak to-day for the 
preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause. I 
speak to-day out of a solicitous and anxious heart for the 
restoration to the country of that quiet and harmony, 
■which make the blessings of this Union so rich and so 
dear to us all. These are the motives and the sole mo- 
tives that influence me." If in that declaration he was 
sincere, was he not bound in conscience to give the 
counsels of that day? What Avcrc they? What was 
the siniz:le one for which his i)olitical morality was called 
in question? Only that a provision of the Federal Con- 
stitution, ordaining the restitution of fugitive slaves, 
should be executed according to its true meaning. This 
only. And might he not in good conscience keep the 
Constitution in this part, and in all, lor the preservation 
of the Union ? 

Under liis oath to support it, and to support it all, and 
with his opinions of that duty so long held, proclaimed 
imifonnh-. in whose vindication on some great days, he 
had found the chief opportunity of his personal glory, 
might he not, in good conscience support it, and all of it, 
even if he could not, and no lniinan intelligence could, 
certainly, know, that the extreme evil would follow, in 
innuediate consequence, its violation ? "Was it so recent 
a doctrine of his that the Constitution was obligatory 



79 

upon the national and individual conscience, that you 
should ascribe it to sudden and irresistible temptation ? 
Why, what had he, quite down to the seventh of March, 
that more truly individualized him — what had he more 
characteristically his own — wherewithal had he to glory 
more or other than all beside, than this very doctrine of 
the sacred and permanent obligation to support each 
and all parts of that great compact of union and justice? 
Had not this been his distinction, his specialiti/ — almost 
the foible of his greatness — the darling and master pas- 
sion ever ? Consider that that was a sentiment which 
had been part of his conscious nature for more than 
sixty years ; that from the time he bought his first copy 
of the Constitution on the handkerchief, and revered 
parental lips had commended it to him, with all other 
holy and beautiful things, along with lessons of rever- 
ence to God, and the belief and love of His Scriptures, 
along with the doctrine of the catechism, the unequalled 
music of Watts, the name of Washiugton — there had 
never been an hour that he had not held it the master 
work of man — just in its ethics, consummate in its 
practical wisdom, paramount in its injunctions ; that 
every 3' ear of life had deepened the original impression : 
that as his mind opened, and his associations Avidened, 
he found that every one for whom he felt respect, in- 
structors, theological and moral teachers, his entire party 
connection, the opposite party, and the whole countr}'-, 
so held it, too; that its fruits of more than half a cen- 
tury of union, of happiness, of renown, bore constant and 
clear witness to it in his mind ; that it chanced that 
certain emergent and rare occasions had devolved on 
him to stand forth to maintain it, to vindicate its inter- 
pretation, to vindicate its authority, to unfold its work- 
ings and uses ; that he had so acquitted himself of that 



80 

opportunity as to have won the title of its Expounder 
and Defender, s(j that his proudest memories, his most 
prized renown, referred to it. and were entwined with 
it — Mild <;iv whether with such antecedents, readiness 
to execute, or disposition to evade, would have heen the 
hardest to ex^jlain ; likeliest to suggest the surmise of a 
new temptation! lie who knows any thing of man, 
knows that his vote for heginning the restoration of har- 
mony Ijy keeping tlie whole Constitution, was deter- 
mined, was necessitated hy the great law of sequences — 
a great law of cause and efleet, running hack to his 
mother's arms, as resistless as the law ^Yllich moves the 
system about the sun — and that he must have given it, 
althouu'h it liad l)een opened to him in vision, that 
within the next natural day his "eyes should he turned 
to behold for the last time the sim in heaven." 

To accuse him in that act of '•• sinning against his own 
con.sciencc," is to charge, one of these things; eitlicr 
that no well instructed conscience can approve and 
maintain the Constitution, and each of its parts ; and 
therefore that his, by inference, did not approve it ; or 
tliat he had never employed the proper means of in- 
structing his conscience; and therefore its approval, if it 
Avere given, was itself an immorality. The accuser must 
assert one of these propositions, lie will not deny, I 
take it for granted, that the conscience requires to be in- 
structed by political teaching, in order to guide the citi- 
zen, or the i)ublic man aright, in the matter of political 
duties. Will he say that the moral .'sentiments alone, 
whatever their origin ; whether factitious and deriva- 
tive, or });ircel of the si)irit of the child and born with 
it ; thai tlic\- alone, by Ibrce of strict and mere ethical 
training, become (|ualilie(l to pronounce authoritatively 
whether the Constitution, or any other vast, and com- 



. 81 

plex citil policy, as a whole, whereby a nation is creat- 
ed, and preserved, ought to have been made, or ought 
to be executed ? Will he venture to tell you that if 
your conscience approves the Union, the Constitution in 
all its parts, and the law which administers it, that you 
are bound to obey and uphold tliem; and if it disap- 
proves, you must, according to your measure, and in 
your circles of agitation, disobey and subvert them, and 
leave the matter there — forgetting or designedly omit- 
ting to tell you also that you are bound, in all good 
faith and diligence to resort to studies and to teachers 
ah extra — in order to determine whether the conscience 
ought to approve or disapprove the Union, the Constitu- 
tion and the law, in view of the ivhole aggregate of their 
nature and fruits ? Does he not perfectly know that 
this moral faculty, however trained, by mere moral 
institution, specifically directed to that end, to be tender, 
sensitive, and peremptory, is totally unequal to decide 
on any action, or any thing, but the very simplest ; that 
which produces the most palpable and immediate result 
of unmixed good, or unmixed evil ; and that when it 
comes to judge on the great mixed cases of the world, 
where the consequences are numerous, their develop- 
ment slow and successive, the light and shadow of a 
blended and multiform good and evil spread out on the 
lifetime of a nation, that then morality must borrow 
from history; from politics; from reason operating on 
history and politics ; her elements of determination ? 
I think he must agree to this. He must agree, I think, 
that to single out one provision in a political system of 
many parts and of elaborate interdependence, to take it 
all alone, exactly as it stands, and without attention to 
its origin and history ; the necessities, morally resistless, 
which prescribed its introduction into the system, the 



82 

iin measured jrood in other forms ^vl^K•ll its allowance 
buys, the nnniea.surecl evil in otlier f(jnns -which its al- 
lowance hinders — ^vithout attention to these, to present 
it in all '-the nakedness of a metaphysical abstraction" 
to the mere sensil/dities ; and ask if it is inhnman, and 
if thev answer accordint^ to their kind, that it is, then 
to say that the problem is solved, and the right of diso- 
bedience is made clear — lie must agree that this is not 
to exalt reason and conscience, but to outrage both, 
lie must agree that although the supremacy of con- 
science is absolute ^vllether the decision be right or 
•wrong, that is, accordlnr/ to ihe real quaUlics of thinf/s or not, 
that there lies back of the actual conscience, and its 
actual decisions, the great anterior duty of having a 
conscience that i<hall dcrulc accordinrj to the real qualities of 
things; that to this vast attainment some adequate 
knowdedge of the real (jualities of the things ^vhich are 
to be subjected to its inspection is indispensable ; that if 
the matter to be judged of is any thing so large, com- 
plex, and conventional as the duty of the citizen, or the 
public man, to the State ; the duty of preserving or de- 
stroying the order of things in ^vhich ^ve are born ; the 
duty of executing or violating one of the provisions of 
organic law \\\\\Ai the country, having a 'svide and clear 
view before and after, had deemed a needful instrumen- 
tal means for the preservation of that order; that then 
it is not enouLrh to relegate the citizen, or the public 
man, to a higher law, and an interior illumination, and 
leave him there. Sucli discourse is '-as the stars, uhich 
give so Uttle light because they arc so high." He must 
agree that in such case, morality itself should go to 
school. There must be science as well as conscience, as 
old Fuller has said. Slie nuist her.^elf learn of history; 
she must learn of politics; she must consult the build- 



S2 



o 



ers of the State, the living and the dead, to know its 
value, its aspects in the long run, on happiness and 
morals; its dangers; the means of its preservation; the 
maxims and arts imperial of its glory. To fit her to be 
the mistress of civil life, he will agree, that she must 
come out for a space from the interior round of emo- 
tions, and subjective states and contemplations, and in- 
trospection, " cloistered, unexercised, unbreathed" — and, 
carrying with her nothing but her tenderness, her scru- 
pulosity, and her love of truth, survey the objective 
realities of the State ; ponder thoughtfully on the com- 
plications, and impediments, and antagonisms which 
make the noblest politics but an aspiring, an approxima- 
tion, a compromise, a tj^pe, a shadow of good to come, 
" the buying of great blessings at great prices " — and 
there learn civil duty secundum suhjcctam matcriam. " Add 
to your virtue knowledge " — or it is no virtue. 

And now, is he who accuses Mr. Webster of " sinning 
against his own conscience," quite sure that he knows, 
that that conscience, — well instructed by profoundest 
political studies, and thoughts of the reason ; well in- 
structed by an appropriate moral institution sedulously 
applied, did not commend and approve his conduct to 
himself? Does he know, that he had not anxiously, and 
maturely studied the ethics of the Constitution ; and as 
a question of ciMcs, but of ethics applied to a stupendous 
problem of practical life, and had not become satisfied 
that they were right? Does he know that he had 
not done this, when his faculties were all at their best ; 
and his motives under no suspicion ? May not such an 
inquirer, for aught you can know ; may not that great 
mind have verily and conscientiously thought that he 
had learned in that investigation many things? May 
he not have thought that he learned, that the duty of 



Si 

tbo inluibitants of the free States, in that day's extrem- 
it\-. t(j tlie repuhlic, the duty at all events of statesmen, 
to the repuhhc, is a little too large, and delicate, and dif- 
ficult to Ije all comprehended in the single emotion of com- 
passion for one class of persons in the commonwealth, or 
in carrying out the single principle of ahstract, and natu- 
ral, and violent justice to one class? May he not have 
thought that he found there some stupendous exemplifi- 
cations of -what we read of. in books of casuistry, the 
"dialectics of conscience," as conflicts of duties; such 
thintrs as the conflicts of the greater with the less: con- 
flicts of the attainable with the visionary ; conflicts of the 
real with the seeming ; and may he not have been 
soothed to learn tliat the evil which he found in this 
part of the Constitution was the least of twoj was nna- 
■voidable; -was compensated; was justified; was com- 
manded, as l)y a voice from the mount, by a more ex- 
ceeding and enduring good? May he not have thought 
that he had learned, that the grandest, most diilicult, 
most pleasing to God, of the achievements of secular 
wisdom and jjliilanthropy, is the building of a State; 
that of the first class of grandeur and difliculty, and ac- 
ceptableness to Ilim, in this kind, was the building of 
our own : that unless everyljody of consequence enough 
to 1)0 heard of in (he age and generation of "Washington 
— unless that whole age and generation were in a con- 
spiracy to clicat themselves, and history, and posterity, 
a certain j)olicy of concession and forbearance of region 
to region, was indispensalde to rear that master work of 
man ; and that that same policy of concession and for- 
bearance is as indispensabh', more so. now. to aflbrd a 
rational ground of hope for its })reservation ? I\lay he 
not have tiiought that ho liad learned that the obliga- 
tion, if such in any sense you may call it, of one State to 



85 

allow itself to become an asylum for those flying from 
slavery in another State, was an obligation of benevo- 
lence, of humanity onl}', not of justice ; that it must 
therefore, on ethical principles, be exercised under all 
the limitations which regulate and condition the be- 
nevolence of States ; that therefore each is to exercise 
it in strict subordination to its own interests, estimated 
by a wise statesmanship, and a well instructed public 
conscience ; that benevolence itself, even its ministra- 
tions of mere good-will, is an affair of measure and of 
proportions; and must choose sometimes between the 
greater good, and the less ; that if, to the highest degree, 
and widest diflusion of human happiness, a Union of 
States such as ours, some free, some not so, was neces- 
sary; and to such Union the Constitution was neces- 
sary ; and to such a Constitution this clause was neces- 
sary, humanity itself prescribes it, and presides in it ? 
May he not have thought that he learned that there are 
proposed to humanity in this world many fields of be- 
neficent exertion ; some larger, some smaller, some more, 
some less expensive and profitable to till ; that among 
these it is always lawful, and often indispensable to make 
a choice ; that sometimes, to acquire the right, or the 
ability to labor in one, it is needful to covenant, not to 
invade another ; and that such covenant, in partial re- 
straint, rather in reasonable direction of philanthropy, 
is good in the forum of conscience ; and setting out with 
these very elementary maxims of practical morals, may 
he not have thought that he learned from the care- 
ful study of the facts of our history, and opinions, that 
to acquire the power of advancing the dearest interests 
of man, through generations countless, by that unequal- 
led security of peace and progress, the Union ; the power 
of advancing the interest of each State, each region, each 

8 



86 

relation — the slave and the master; the power of sub- 
jecting!:: a wliole continent all astir, and on fire with the 
emulation of youni,^ republics ; of subjecting it, through 
a'-'es of household calm, to the sweet influences of Chris- 
tianit y, of culture, of the great, gentle, and sure reformer, 
time, that to enable us to do this, to enable us to grasp 
this boundless and ever-renewing harvest of philan- 
thropy, it would have been a good bargain — that hu- 
manity herself would have approved it — to have bound 
ourselves never so much as to look across the line into 
the inclosure of Southern municipal slavery ; certainly 
never to enter it ; still less, still less to 

" Pluck its berries harsh and crude, 
And with forced fingers rude 
Shatter its leaves before the mellowing year." 

Until the accuser who charges him, now that he is in 
his grave, " with having sinned against his conscience," 
will assert that the conscience of a public man may not, 
must not, be instructed by profound knowledge of the 
vast subject-matter with which public life is conversant 
— even as the conscience of the mariner may be and 
must be instructed by the knowledge of navigation ; 
and that of the pilot by the knowledge of the depths 
and shallows of the coast ; and that of the engineer of 
the boat and the train, by the knowledge of the capaci- 
ties of liis mechanism, to achieve a proposed velocity ; 
and will assert that he is certain that the consummate 
science of our great statesman, was felt hj himself to ^;;r- 
scnbcto his moralifi/ another conduct than that which he 
adopted, and that he thus consciously outraged that 
" sense of duty which pursues us ever" — is he not in- 
excusable, whoever he is, that so judges another ? 

But it is time that this eulogy was spoken. My heart 



87 

goes back into the coffin there with him, and I would 
pause. I went — it is a day or two since — alone, to 
see again the home which he so dearly loved, the cham- 
ber where he died, the grave in which they laid him — 
all habited as when 

" His look drew audience still as night, 
Or summer's noontide air," 

till the heavens be no more. Throughout that spacious 
and calm scene all things to the eye showed at first 
unchanged. The books in the library, the portraits, the 
table at which he wrote, the scientific culture of the 
land, the course of agricultural occupation, the coming 
in of harvests, fruit of the seed his own hand had scat- 
tered, the animals and implements of husbandry, the 
trees planted by him in lines, in copses, in orchards, by 
thousands, the seat under the noble elm on which he 
used to sit to feel the south-west wind at evening, or 
hear the breathings of the sea, or the not less audible 
music of the starry heavens, all seemed at first un- 
changed. The sun of a bright day, from which, how- 
ever, something of the fervors of midsummer were 
wanting, fell temperately on them all, filled the air on 
all sides with the utterances of life, and gleamed on the 
Ions; line of ocean. Some of those whom on earth he 
loved best, still were there. The great mind still seemed 
to preside ; the great presence to be with you ; you 
might expect to hear again the rich and playful tones of 
the voice of the old hospitality. Yet a moment more, 
and all the scene took on the aspect of one great monu- 
ment, inscribed with his name, and sacred to his memory. 
And such it shall be in all the future of America ! The 
sensation of desolateness, and loneliness; and darkness, 



88 

uiih uliidi you wc it now, Mill pass away ; the sharp 
■^rwi' of love ami friendship will become soothed ; men 
uill H'pair thither as they are wont to commemorate 
tJK" great days of history ; the same glance shall take 
in, and the twinie emotions shall ^aeet and hles.s the 
Il.irhor of the Pilgrims, and the Tomlj of Webster. 



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